Jeffrey Wells Because I really don’t want Kamala Harris to take over. Really. I’m a center-lefty (i.e., a centrist with a classic liberal history before the scourge of wokeism) but I’d honestly feel better about Nikki Haley. She’s a better candidate now than Harris was in ‘19 and early ‘20.
“That’s the one thing that Democrats and Republicans have in common — they’re both waiting for their [likeliest Presidential] candidates to die.” — Bill Maher monologue, 11.10.23.
I’ve sliced out the date and location of this festive affair, but doesn’t it feel great with the SAG/AFTRA strike over and done with and actors finally free to mix and mingle?
It was unseasonably warm when this snap of Daniel Day Lewis, 66, and Bradley Cooper, 48, was shot during an allegedly recent Manhattan stroll. Right away you’re thinking Cooper wants DDL to come out of retirement. Lewis has presumably seen Maestro.
Both men are obviously in excellent shape, but clothing-wise they’re on separate planets.
Cooper’s royal blue T-shirt is totally high-thread-count and blends with the slim-straight jeans. He obviously calculated that if he was wearing canary-yellow sneakers (an HE footwear thing for years) he had to wear a bright yellow cap along with the de rigeur tinted shades. Nothing says “I am a hotshot celebrity who fancies a 21st Century Greta Garbo attitude!” like this headgear combo.
Lewis’ gray-with-white-pinstripe shirt looks a tiny bit rednecky, and I don’t know what to say about that tired, droopy-ass orange scarf. And what’s up with the large mermaid tattoo on his left arm? Nice belt buckle but the dad jeans are too long and bulky, and the Maine lumber yard work boots…okay, they’re not a problem per se but there’s something “fuck you”-ish about them.
Look at DDL’s vaguely pissed-off expression. This is a man who gets up in the morning and says, “Okay, what can I scowl at?”
[Posted on 5.4.15] The very first time I’ve ever heard that familiar John Williams theme coming out of a wooden, 1930s-era radio. It’ll probably turn out to be the last time. The radio is located at Dun-Well Doughnuts on Montrose near Bushwick. But that’s not the point.
The waitress behind the counter spoke with the usual mincing, sexy-baby, beep-uh-duh-beep-beep vocal fry. When she asked if I wanted soy or almond milk (as they have no dairy), it sounded like “deebeedeesoyahahmand?” Uhm…are you asking if I want regular or low-fat milk? “M’sayingweeyonlyhavesoyahmand.” Soy or…? “Soyahamand.” Which is the least problematic? “Soy.”
Marty looks fine but other two…yeesh. Maybe don’t wear white?
This is as serious as a heart attack. It’s the doddering, slurry-voiced, squinty-eyed, 80something thing. Joe is Jimmy Carter in ‘79, and he’s really gotta step down. The Beast is at the door. Lyndon Johnson read the writing on the wall in March of ‘68 and acted accordingly. Trump will not defeat Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer.
Yesterday the always-candid Jeff Sneider dismissed or back-handed Maestro on a generational basis. I naturally took offense, having been swept off my feet by Bradley Cooper’s rapturous biopic.
HE reply #1:
“How many major Best Picture contenders have you urinated upon? You pissed on Poor Things, you’re pissing on Maestro. Have you pissed on The Holdovers? I don’t think so but I’m asking.
“Juan Antonio Bayona is an excellent filmmaker, but he’s never come close to matching the impact of The Orphanage, his big debut effort. I’ll see Society of the Snow (a shitty title) this weekend.”
HE reply #2:
“And you’re playing an age-ist card? People in your somewhat younger age bracket will be less supportive of Maestro. than GenX-ers and boomers, you’re saying? The older and mid-range Millennials at the after-party, you mean?
“First of all, what is WRONG with them? Are they on shallow pills? Maestro is cinema with a capital C — it’s dealing cards from a Citizen Kane–like deck. And your party pallies didn’t respond because….what, it doesn’t reflect older and mid-range Millennial attitudes? Because it channels elite-social-class attitudes from a bygone era (‘40s through ‘80s)? Because, as I said in yesterday’s Maestro vs.Oppenheimer review, “it hasn’t a woke bone in its entire body”?
“If this is the case (and I’m not saying that it necessarily is — I’m just speculating) you guys need to consider the possibility that you’re genetic mutants.”
I saw Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla last night, and it has a certain depressive, despairing, slow-paced, fade-to-black quality that some viewers might find…well, respectable. I understand why certain critics have approved. It’s austere. And anti-male, of course. Coppola has been drawing water from this well over and over (i.e., a beautiful, young, sensitive princess is trapped in an authoritarian, male-dominated world) — here she’s added a #MeToo “expose the bastards!” ingredient.
I didn’t hate it but Priscilla sure moves like a turtle, and the cinematography is too dimly lighted and funereal even. (That or the foot-lambert levels are way below SMPTE standards at the Westport AMC plex where I saw it.) And some of the whispered, all-but-inaudible dialogue is all but impossible. Subtitles!
All I know is that the longer the film went on, the more my pulse dropped.
As I was exiting the theatre I overheard a youngish, palefaced brunette tell her mom (same characteristics) that she “loved it.” As she stood in the lobby I told her I had also just seen Priscilla, and that I was wondering (without tipping my own hand) what in particular she had loved. “It’s just that it tells the story from her viewpoint!” she exclaimed. “The others (Elvis films, I assumed she meant) have all told it from his.”
You’re right, I said — it certainly has Priscilla’s back.
If you’ve read “Elvis and Me“, Priscilla Presley‘s 1987 tell-all, or are familiar with the main story points (Elvis’s refusal to have intercourse before marriage, his pattern of infidelity including affairs with Ann-Margret, Nancy Sinatra and many others, the drug use, his dictatorial nature and random violence, Priscilla’s affair with a martial-arts instructor named Mike Stone, Elvis’s raping Priscilla when he learned of the affair), it’s important to understand that Coppola’s film sidesteps or underplays this material and in some cases ignores it entirely. She was determined not to make a “this happened and then that happened” biopic. She wanted to suggest and hint but not be especially blunt about anything.
The result, frankly, is boredom, albeit a respectable form of it — the kind that many critics have approved of.
