The River House, 447 E. 52nd Street (cul de sac along the frigid East River), New York, NY 10022.
Jeff Wells
Wept With Joy When I Saw These Stories
Eleven days ago a N.Y. Times headline severely traumatized the wokeys and pretty much sent them into a tailspin. Diversity Stalinists lamenting from coast to coast…”oh, noooo!”…and all of it stemming from a single impact-grenade piece by Kabir Chibber.
And then came Robbie Collin’s similar Telegraph story — “Hollywood’s great unwokening has been unleashed.” Excerpt: “Loath as I am to give the w-word an airing, there’s no avoiding it here: 2024 was the year in which Hollywood began to move into its post-woke era.”
The tide has turned, ayeholes! Sanity and proper proportion are being restored.
Williams’ Greatest Accomplishment
John Williams is best known for having composed knockout scores for a long list of Steven Spielberg films, reaching all the way back to the Gerald R. Ford administraion. But of all his rousing musical world-builders, the absolute peak was his score for E.T., the Extra Terrestrial (’82). The final four minutes of Spielberg’s suburban family fantasy is owned by Williams’ violins, horns and cymbal-crash moments. It’s as if the film’s emotional finale exists to support Williams’ music rather than the other way around.
YouTube commenter: “Very few movies have an emotional climax this poignant and tear-inducing, and so much of that comes from Williams’ score here. Really one of his greatest moments, and Spielberg trusts that Williams will deliver.”
Thundering Peru Pushback
HE’s own Bobby Peru wrote the other day that I’ve become a broken anti-woke record. “Several posts per week for years about the same topic is ridiculous,” he wrote, “especially when the culture has moved on from an antiquated term that only still holds water in conservative echo chambers.”
HE’s wise and comprehensive reply will, of course, be lost on the likes of Mr. Peru. Because members of the woke left**, like vampires, are unable to see their own reflection:
“You can kvetch and complain all you want, Bobby, but the below video is a dose of trans-mocking humor, and it’s FUNNY.
“You can kvetch and complain all you want, Bobby, but Kamala Harris lost the election because she wouldn’t acknowledge that woke-ism (which includes (a) an across-the-board dismissal of straight white dudes and (b) a screeching rejection of the way things used to be before progressive left INSANITY invaded the culture around six or seven years ago) is even a thing, much less a form of social retribution.
A few weeks ago Bill Maher described the Democratic party as a ‘Portlandia sketch.’
“Wokeism, you’ve written, is ‘an antiquated term that holds water only in conservative echo chambers’? The presidential election happened only six weeks ago, and a mass rejection of progressive left insanity was a significant factor in Kamala’s loss. SIX WEEKS AGO.
“You can kvetch and complain all you want, Bobby, but wokeism (or fear of woke judgment about any number of sins and shortcomings, including presumed transphobia) is why Emilia Perez is one of the five Best Picture hotties as we speak. Criticizing this film COULD lead to accusations of bigotry and a subsequent loss of income and so (hellooo?) people are playing it safe by saying they love it, and this is an ongoing social awareness thing RIGHT NOW. Which signifies, obviously, that people haven’t ‘moved on.’
“Gender-neutrai acting awards represent a kind of fungus on the brain. Nobody wants members of the trans community to get anything but a fair and unbiased shake in any field of endeavor, but trans trendiness resulting in the elimination of basic gender norms that have been in place since the first stirrings of life on planet earth?…get outta here, man!”
Friendo #1: “Your readers, like Bobby, are insane on the subject. They don’t get it. They’re quadrupling down on living in their bubble. They don’t get the MYTHOLOGY of the trans issue — that it’s not about ‘trans rights,’ but about the progressive left’s hostility to gender norms. We can see that in something as trivial-yet-revealing as the movement in movie awards toward gender-neutral acting categories.
“Ordinary. People. Do. Not. Like. This. Shit.
“And yes, that’s why Emilia Pérez –an utter mediocrity as far as I’m concerned (you can feel the film slide into emotional and dramatic oblivion in its second half) — is shaping up as a potential Best Picture winner.”
Friendo #2: ‘You should remind Bobby that the UK just banned puberty blockers, which makes the US the only major nation that hasn’t.
“The woke thing is a disease that has spread all over, and even other countries are now pissed at the US. I was watching The Brutalist (but it could be any Oscar movie) and I thought, okay, here we go. Now the Black character has entered the story and we must patiently wait for the narrative to play out so everyone can not feel guilty about themselves and the Academy will accept their film as meeting the standards of the DEI mandate. EVERY MOVIE. EVERY MOVIE.
“Remind Bobby that Hollywood can only tell the same story, and tell it over and over and over again.
“It’s Christian rock, essentially. Bow down to the gods of woke or you will be punished. We just accept it now and try hard to like movies within that context but they are all mandated to be woke. Some are better movies than others but every one them adheres to the ideology. Even A Complete Unknown adheres in this respect by leaning hard into the heartache felt by Elle Fanning‘s Sylvie Russo (aka Suze Rotolo) and Monica Barbaro‘s Joan Baez (had it with that sellfish asshole!)
“They seem to want their films to appeal to women’s studies graduates from Oberlin.”
** HE remains a sensible left-centrist. Okay, just a centrist.
Real As It Gets
The cologne ad, I’m told, is real.
Critics Choice Rubes Play It Safe, Avoid The Bold
In HE’s judgment, the decision of the Critics Choice members to ignore the obviously superior Babygirl in the Best Picture category, not to mention failing to nominate Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in their respective acting categories, is a bad thing.
It is, in fact, conclusive proof that they’re mostly a congregation of prissy little status quo cowards ….subservient suck-ups, I mean, who haven’t the character or courage to stand up for a film that really and truly excites and provokes.
“Americans get the willies when it comes to strong sexual content,” a friend remarks. People like this are what’s wrong with the film world.
Conclave and Wicked landed 11 nominations each, and Anora — clearly the best of the bunch — only landed four noms.
Wicked is fine — I felt agreeably rocked when I caught the NYC all-media — but please don’t drop to your knees and give this YA girl fantasy the top prize…no!
The CC empties nominated The Substance for Best Picture but blew off The Apprentice? We all love Hugh Grant but nominating his Heretic performance while blanking Sebastian Stan‘s Donald Trump, not to mention Jeremy Strong‘s Roy Cohn in the supporting category? C’mon!
Tarantino & Avary, Together Again…Yay!
Quentin Tarantino: “What’s the difference between television and a good movie?
“The first season of Yellowstone is like a good movie, and I ended up watching three seasons of it. While I was watching it, I was compelled. I was caught up in it. But at the end of the day it’s all just a soap opera. A buncha characters, you know their back-stories, but it’s the compelling-ness of a soap opera. You’re caught up in the moments as you’re watching them, but you won’t remember it five years from now.
“The difference is, I’ll see a good western movie” — Winchester 73, The Bravados, High Noon, The Wild Bunch — “and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I’ll remember this scene or that scene, and the fact it builds to an emotional climax to some degree, and that there’s a payoff. There’s not a payoff to this [Yellowstone-resembling] stuff.”
This Guy Is Cool
…in a way that totally contradicts or negates or at least counter-balances the way Paul Mescal is uncool. Look at Harris Dickinson barely holding his contempt for red-carpet journos in check.
And at 6’2″, he’s significantly taller than the 5’11” Mescal, who will play Paul McCartney to Dickinson’s John Lennon in Sam Mendes‘ extremely scary-sounding quartet of Beatle movies. Lennon and McCartney were roughly the same height, or in the general vicinity of 5’10”.
Harris Dickinson at the ‘BABYGIRL’ premiere. pic.twitter.com/UiiP2b3aIc
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) December 12, 2024
Soft Spot
This is several months old but it lingers. Apologies to all the woo-woo-wokesters who will take offense.
This is relatively recent:
Moving “Babygirl” Into Fifth Place on HE’s Gatecrashers List
And so September 5 is getting bumped down to sixth place, and Blitz down to seventh place, etc.
“Babygirl is an erotic thriller that is, unlike so many which came before, both erotic and thrilling. But what makes it novel is that the thrills are derived from the eroticism itself.
“Sure, much of the narrative thrust (hah) is borne of our lead not wishing to be caught by her family and colleagues in a sordid workplace affair, but that’s an afterthought to the focus of the film: two horned-up adults messily trying to reconcile their mutual animal attraction while also navigating and negotiating one another’s kinks.” — Scullyvision, 12.7.24.
