Obviously younger auds are cool with Anyone But You, at least to some extent. After opening on 12.22 it’s still hanging in there five and a half weeks later, currently residing in third place domestically ($72,377,883) with a decent (if less than crazy humungous) worldwide gross.
Given the fact that Will Gluck‘s Australia-set romcom is absoutely awful to sit through, you’d figure it would be dead by now. Is this because Millennials and Zoomers have no taste? Or is it because Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney are seen as attractive world-class leads now and box-office watchers are just slow to catch on?
After catching Paul Thomas Anderson‘s hippie-dippie Inherent Vice (’14) I decided firmly and finally that PTA should never adapt another Thomas Pynchonnovel. Because I absolutely hated the way Inherent Vice made me feel, plus I couldn’t understand at least 60% or 70% of the dialogue.
Alas, Jordan Ruimy is reporting that Anderson is now shooting another Pynchon adaptation, Vineland. It’s lensing in Northern California (Eureka, Acata, Humboldt County) with Leonardo DiCaprio as Zoyd Wheeler.
Instead of using the book’s 1984 setting, PTA’s film has apparently been re-set in the present.
Last night I caught episodes #1 and #2 of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (Hulu/FX). and I was competely delighted by Tom Hallander‘s Truman Capote. It’s like Capote‘s Philip Seymour Hoffman is back among us, and it’s wonderful. The voice, body language, hat and scarves….perfect. Hollander will be Emmy-nominated and probably win…no question.
You might guess from the credit block that Hollander is playing a supporting role, but he’s absolutely the star. When Hollander’s on-screen, you’re riveted or at least sitting up in your seat. When the swans are front and center you’re paying polite attention and never bored, but at the same you’re waiting for Hollander to return.
The narrative is non-sequential, hopscotching around from year to year, era to era…1984, 1968, 1975, 1966, etc. Hollander is especially glorious in “Pilot,” the initial episode. Episode #2 (“Ice Water In Their Veins”) is about his immediate post-“La Cote Basque” downfall period…obviously sad, boozy and pathetic.
All the swan performances are first-rate with Naomi Watts‘ Babe Paley being the main stand-out. The other performances are completely satisfactory and professional — Diane Lane as Slim Keith (who was no longer slim in the late ’60s and ’70s), Chloë Sevigny as C. Z. Guest (Sevigny and Barry Keohgan are the queen and king of the bee-stung nose realm), Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, Demi Moore as Ann Woodward and Molly Ringwald as Joanne (wife of Johnny) Carson. All completely convincing, no speed bumps or issues of any kind.
Jon Robin Baitz‘s screenplay is witty, amusing, blistering, spot-on. Gus Van Sant‘s direction is also top-=of-the-lone, and the animated credit sequence [see below] is luscious and haunting.
There are millions of MAGA morons out there who actually think Donald Trump would somehow make this country a better place if re-elected. But there are many more millions on their side of the argument who understand who and what Trump is — a salivating dog, a sociopath, a criminal scumbag, an anti-democratic authoritarian — and plan to vote for him anyway.
Why? Because they absolutely hate progressive lefties, and are convinced Trump will make their lives miserable and may even undo some of their drastic social measures. Trump may destroy American democracy while doing so, but they don’t seem to care. They just want to stick it their cultural enemies, and for the cynical Trumpies nothing else matters.
MAGA spite voters despise wokesters for pushing an anti-white cultural narrative (i.e., all whites are evil, all people of color are beautiful), and for the atmosphere of political intolerance on college campuses today, and the pro-Palestian protests and the toppling of statues of Thomas Jefferson and removing of Abraham Lincoln‘s name from schools, an educational system that values DEI over merit and is stacked against smart kids who get excellent grades, a general adherence to fluid multi-gender wokethink, the teaching of gay and trans propaganda to soft-clay minds in elementary school classrooms, not to mention drag queens…pregnant men, sex change surgeries, trans men in women’s bathrooms, upscale department store shoplifting by hoodie gangs, six-foot-four trans dudes competing in swim meets against bio-females…all of that insane shit that has turned portions of this country into a left lunatic asylum over the past six years.
Obviously voting to spite the other side is a nihilist thing…unwise, adolescent, stupid, submental. I’ve never voted to spite the other side, and I never will.
In the comment thread for “Chang Elbowing Lane Aside,” Kristi Coulter attempted to cast doubt upon the indisputable woke mindset of New Yorker editor David Remnick, who has drop-kicked Anthony Lane in order to bring in Justin Chang as senior film critc,.
Coulter: “David R has been running The New Yorker since 1998 and isn’t known for kowtowing to thought police of any stripe. He’s probably just trying to keep TNY relevant to its readership, so it can continue existing.”
HE to Coulter: It might be better if people who comment on The New Yorker actually read The New Yorker, as I do.
Excuse me but Remnick ‘doesn’t kowtow to the thought police’? The New Yorker has become one of the main branches of Woke Central over the last seven years. Remnick’s shift in that direction has been particularly egregious because The New Yorker is one of the few places that would have the freedom to resist it.
The more I think about this, the more riled I am by the fundamental shifting formation of the film-critic world that’s taken place over the last two months — the instillation of the light-touch Alissa Wilkinson at the N.Y. Times, and now Justin Chang at The New Yorker.
Both are 40ish Millennial orthodox art-head disciples who do not rock the boat.
The drop-kicked Anthony Lane wrote a mixed review of Flowers of the Killer Moon. Can you imagine Chang or Wilkinson doing that? Not on this earth. The opportunities for that kind of dissenting view coming from a powerful place in mainstream media are, like, vanishing.
…inside Geffen Hall while the film runs without the standard 1959 mono track. Tracks #33 through #48 comprise a grand mood symphony…anxiety, suspense, tingling dread, thundering uncertainties…all in one movement.
Last night I rewatched Primary Colors ('98), the Mike Nichols-directed roman a clef that was adapted from Joe Klein's same-titled 1996 book about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. It was well reviewed but Joe and Jane Popcorn recoiled and it financially flopped. Everyone was mystified but now I understand.
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Amiable Guy to Madonna: “Do you want to talk at all off-camera?”
Warren Beatty to Amiable Guy: “She doesn’t want to live off-camera, much less talk. There’s nothing to say off-camera, Why would you say something at all if it’s off-camera?”
Alek Keshishian‘s Madonna: Truth or Dare (’91) is a seemingly intimate, fairly interesting chronicle of Madonna’s backstage life during her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. She was pretty much Taylor Swift back then.
Beatty and Madonna were quite the attractive couple. They had begun their relationship during the making of Dick Tracy in ’89, when he was 52 and she was 31. Their union lasted for roughly 15 months, which is a decent run in that realm. Madonna and Beatty probably had more to say to each other 34 years ago than Swift and Travis Kelce do now.
The second best scene in Truth or Dare was when Madonna simulatedgivingablowjob with a water bottle. Swift would never do that, or certainly not for posterity. Plus the fan base wouldn’t approve.
Martin Short's socks are totally killer. The black leather lace-ups (probably Italian) are great also. Nice black suit, olive taupe sweater. Easily the best-dressed Club Random guest in the history of this relatively young podcast. Seriously, the socks are wonderful.
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After months and months of floundering around in distribution purgatory, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies has finally landed a theatrical release date — Friday, 3.29.
Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies (Open Road), a pounding, brutally realistic New York City action drama about living-on-the-ragged-edge paramedics.
It beats the shit out of you, this film, but in a way that you can’t help but admire. It’s a tough sit but a very high-quality one. The traumatized soul of lower-depths Brooklyn and the sad, ferociously angry residents who’ve been badly damaged in ways I’d rather not describe has never felt more in-your-face.
In terms of assaultive realism and gritty authenticity Black Flies matches any classic ’70s or ’80s New York City film you could mention…The French Connection, Serpico, Prince of the City, Q & A, Good Time, Across 110th Street.
And what an acting triumph for Sean Penn, who plays the caring but worn-down and throughly haunted Gene Rutkovsky, a veteran paramedic who bonds with and brings along Tye Sheridan‘s Ollie Cross, a shaken-up Colorado native who lives in a shitty Chinatown studio and is trying to get into medical school.
Rutkovsky is a great hardboiled character, and Penn has certainly taken the bull by the horns and delivered his finest performance since his Oscar-winning turns in Mystic River (’03) and Milk (’08).
And Sheridan is also damn good in this, his best film ever. His character eats more trauma and anxiety and suffers more spiritual discomfort than any rookie paramedic deserves, and you can absolutely feel everything that’s churning around inside the poor guy.
At first I thought this 120-minute film would be Bringing Out The Dead, Part 2, but Black Flies, which moves like an express A train and feels more like 90 minutes, struck me as harder and punchier than that 1999 Martin Scorsese film, which I didn’t like all that much after catching it 23 and 1/2 years ago and which I’ve never rewatched.
"The eccentrics are really the only real critics these days. There are so many formerly respectable, self-styled film gurus who've just laid down and accepted their hackdom in the last decade. For anyone who prefers serious criticism, the nutters are all we have." -- comment about August 2010 article titled "Nutter Critics."
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