Lula (aka Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva) is in — one of most dramatic and astonishing political comebacks in world history. And Jair Bolsonaro, the grotesque and contemptible Brazilian Trump, is out.

“Doomstruck,” posted on 10.5.22.

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!

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.

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.

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.

.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t see this coming. I doubt if anyone did. Then again…

If I had been on the jury, I would have felt piqued by the time factor. The alleged incident happened in ‘86 when Kevin Spacey, now 63, was 26, and his accuser Anthony Rapp, now 50, was 14. I would have said “why are we dealing with this so many years after the fact? It happened 36 years ago.”

I experienced a few awful, hurtful things in my teens. Do I still feel angry or wounded about some of them? Yeah, but they happened a long-ass time ago. Move on, be here now.

Based on a Wikipedia link to figures from the California Film Division, I recently reported that Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23) cost $110 million. That’s wrong, I was told today by a Paramount spokesperson. The tab was actually $78 million. Okay then.