Jeffrey Wells If you’re unfortunately tethered to an unhappy and dysfunctional family and can barely stand your siblings during holiday gatherings, you can at least take comfort in the fact that the battling O’Neals were always worse off.
The father of all this misery, of course, was the late Ryan O’Neal, who apparently insisted on disliking his children, never apologizing and blowing them off repeatedly.
Posted early today by the N.Y. Post’s Dana Kennedy:
Respect and praise for the late Tom Smothers, whose provocative views and attitudes in the late ‘60s made The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which aired on CBS for two years and two months (February ‘67 to April ‘69), the hippest mainstream show on television.
If you were youngish and dropping acid, listening to progressive rock (Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who), loving films like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde and The President’s Analyst and generally hating the Vietnam War, you almost certainly watched this intensely spiritual (in a Nehru jacket sense of the term), anti-establishment show on a fairly regular and reverent basis.
CBS finally cancelled the Smothers Comedy Hour over regional complaints that it had pushed the counter-culture envelope too far.
Tom has passed from cancer at age 86.
Is there any way to say that I’m not especially interested in submitting to The Color Purple without sounding like a shitty, closed-off person?
The answer is probably “no”. And so most critics have decided to submit and “enjoy” and just, you know, roll with it. Simpler that way.
I know myself and my cinematic standards, and I can always sense or intuit that a certain film will almost certainly be, for me, a very difficult watch.
Honestly? I didn’t even like the 38-year-old Steven Spielberg version, which many critics have said is allegedly superior to the Blitz Bazawule newbie.
Just so we’re clear, Carl Reiner‘s Where’s Poppa? and Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock delivered the one-two punch that made George Segal into a marquee brand.
Segal was a respected, well-liked, plugging-away actor throughout the ’60s, and he definitely elevated his stock rating with his lead performance in Irvin Kershner‘s Loving (’70 — 3.4.70).
But Reiner-Yates added the boldface, above-the-title stardom factor to Segal’s guilt-ridden, self-flagellating, Jewish-guy thing, and he was off to the races.
Poppa (a cult film, not a hit) was released on 11.10.70, and The Hot Rock (a silly ensemble caper comedy for guys) arrived on 1.26.72 or 14 months later.
Pre-Poppa and post-Hot Rock Segal were entirely different entities.
With these two in the bag, Segal landed the titular role in Paul Mazursky‘s Blume in Love (6.17.73), and thereafter he wasn’t just a star but a complex ’70s soul man — the highest rung of the realm.
And then, 14 months after Blume, came Segal’s Bill Denny in California Split (8.7.74) — another grand-slammer.
And then God lost interest and Segal’s hot streak ended, just like that. Segal kept working for another 40 years after that, and good for his spirit and tenacity. But what a rude jolt.
1970 through ‘74: “You’re finally really hot, George…you’re totally cool and everyone digs you.” 1975 and onward: “Okay, you’re still good but time to cool things down.”
I’m truly lucky to have a strong constitution and therefore good health. And I absolutely love doing the column and living this rat-a-tat life on a day-to-day basis, but the best part of my journalistic hot–shot life is over. 1991 to 2019 — 28 years when things were pretty good and often delicious and sometimes wonderful. I’m simply too poor these days. Savoring the joys and adventures of yore is out of reach —that’s the long and the short of it.
Lee Sun-kyun, the popular 48-year-old South Korean actor who played the wealthy dad in Parasite (i.e., the aloof fellow who fired the long-serving maid who later knocked on the front door during the rainstorm, etc.), has apparently offed himself. Drug use apparently had something to do with this tragedy. Very sorry for all concerned.
If you know George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty–Four”, you surely know the sinister character of “O’Brien,” a duplicitous double agent who pretends to be Winston Smith’s friend but is actually a member of the Thought Police. OBrien’s goal is to seek out and persecute thought criminals.
I’m not saying David Poland is a manifestation of a woke O’Brien but he is unmistakably projecting a false flag narrative when he posts bullshit like the tweets below. Poland is either completely self-deluding, which doesn’t square with the fact that he’s very sharp and socially aware, or he is simply an agent of smoke and propaganda who is spewing this crap in order to politically protect himself.
The shithead critics who’ve pissed all over George Clooney‘s The Boys in the Boat — easily his best directed film since Good Night and Good Luck — have been themselves pissed on by Joe and Jane Popcorn.
Good for this — Clooney’s underdog-vs.-overdog Olympic sports film is familiar but elegant — a confident effort that believes in itself and presents grace and simplicity for the virtues they’ve always been.
The difference is that critics are hung up on racial signage (i.e., the woke comintern has instructed them to regard any all-white, non-diverse movie that isn’t about building the A-bomb…they’ve been ordered to regard such films askance) and Joe and Jane simply aren’t distracted by same…they’re just watching the movie and going “hmm, yeah, pretty good.”
There’s no disputing that The Iron Claw is coarse, bruising and emotionally shameless — a death-trip family flick with an arch-villain of a paterfamilias (Holt McCallany’s Fritz Von Erich) whose malice is barely addressed by his sons and never confronted.
And all of it colored by the fraudulence of the “sport” of wrestling itself — a rancid charade that makes you want to barf or at least turn away.
And the grotesque, eye-rolling spectacle of one son after another almost comically succumbing to the black void like Radio City Rockettes dancers performing choreographed splits…it’s somewhere between nauseating, hilarious and ludicrous.
There’s another thing that’s beyond dispute, and that’s the fact that those who are earnestly praising this beyond-bizarre, blue-collar soap opera should never, ever be trusted.
I’m dead serious — the critics and HE commenters who’ve given Sean Durkin’s film a gold star and a back rub are dishonest people, or at the very least completely unmitigated and certainly undisciplined by what most of us would call “taste”.
For the rest of their lives these knaves, these one-eyed jacks, these human-sized hunks of gravel will have to answer for their praise for this garbage dump of a film…it will stalk them in perpetuity.
Chicago Reader critic Micco Caparale, 12.19:
N.Y. Post critic Johnny Oleksinksi:
Incidentally: Before yesterday’s screening of The Iron Claw I hadn’t realized how short The Bear ‘s Jeremy Allen White is. The guy is only 5’ 7”, or seven inches shorter than the late Kerry Von Erich (whom he plays in the film) and an inch shorter than Humphrey Bogart.
My first thought while watching The Iron Claw was “my God, what has Zac Efron done to himself? He looks like the Incredible Hulk…not to mention that awful Prince Valiant hair…good heavens.”
Professional wrestling is a joke. I’ve always hated the crude theatricality, the over-amped machismo. Fuck this “sport” and fuck me for being gullible enough to believe I might have an okay time with this low-rent, on-the-nose, over-pumped waste of time.
Bodies dropping to the canvas, guys screaming in pain, the exaggeration of anguish.
I hate wrestling culture even more than bowling culture (Kingpin) and NASCAR culture (Talladega Nights) and that’s saying something.
It took me less than ten minutes to decide I didn’t give a damn about the Von Erich family and their ludicrous blue-collar braggadocio and strange penchant for self-destruction and tragedy — Kevin (Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), Papa Fritz (Holt McCallany), Mama Doris (Maura Tierney), Pam Adkisson (Lily James) and Mike (Stanley Simons).
Which HE commenters urged me to see this fucking film? As they brought pain into my life, I will bring some kind of pain into theirs. It’s only fair.
Three dead brothers embracing at lakeside…
The Iron Claw has another half-hour to go. I feel obliged to stick it out but God, this is awful.
If you’re lucky or industrious enough to enjoy a peak period, it almost always happens between your mid 20s and early 40s. (Mine didn’t begin until my early 40s — go figure.) Any way you slice it youth is a ferociously fast train, and is over before you know it.
Johnny Depp was 31 when this Annie Leibovitz photo was taken in ‘94; Kate Moss was 20.
Gene Tierney was 23 when this shot was taken. She peaked in the 1940s — all was gravy, her life knew no bounds, she had a thing with JFK, etc. Career-wise and otherwise things got tough for her in the ‘50s.
