Twitter/X statement from Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein: “It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of Bradley’s efforts…it happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
Sometime in the mid ’90s the late Robert Evans shared a biological observation with me: “When you get older your nose gets bigger, your ears get bigger and longer and your teeth get smaller.”
We’ve all sampled food-and-atmosphere moments to die for…perfect transitional serenity…that quietly radiant feeling in which the place and the warmth (and not just the climatorial kind) are so calming and poignant that time itself has seemingly stopped…much more than just sitting at a table…enveloped by bliss and rapture.
Two nights ago I happened upon a brief video of such a moment…12 years and three months ago (late May 2011) on a calm and sunny day in Venice, Italy…placid, a gentle breeze, the faint sound of water lapping at pilings…sitting at an outdoor table at Trattoria San Basilio, a fairly small (you could even call it tiny) restaurant, waterside in southern Dorsoduru…no tourists, no madding crowd…Calle del Vento, 1516, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy.
HE's director-writer friendo believes that the WGA negotiators are "an ineffective wild bunch -- great with threats, terrible with realistic negotiations."
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In the tradition of James Agee, Otis Ferguson, Andre Bazin, Francois Truffaut, Andrew Sarris, Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, Penelope Gilliat, Todd McCarthy, Joseph McBride and Owen Gleiberman…kidding.
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Three or four weeks ago the driver’s side window in my VW Passat gave up the ghost. It went down but wouldn’t go up again. The front-seat passenger window worked fine and still does; ditto the two backseat windows.
A broken open window obviously means no protection, so I had to handle it pronto. I asked Vinny, a local mechanic whom I respect, if he could fix it. Sure, he said. The next day I met him at a vaguely down-at-the-heels Bridgeport shopping plaza.
Vinny took the door apart and determined that the electrical mechanism that controls the up-and-down motion of the window had suffered a short circuit. The short was caused by a small pool of water that had collected in the door well. To fix it correctly he’d need to find a new white-plastic window mechanism, Vinny said, but he managed to manually crank the window upward.
It was gratifying, at least, that the window was closed and locked in that position. All I had to do was remember to not hit the down-window switch.
I told Vinny I’d get in touch after I returned from Ontario and would promptly pay him to buy and install the mechanism, etc.
Vinny was buried in another job when I returned but that was okay.
Last Saturday I went to a local car wash, and as I approached the vacuum section a Latino guy in a low-thread-count T-shirt motioned for me to lower my window so we could speak. I was temporarily spacing out or daydreaming, but like a total idiot I unthinkingly hit the switch and lowered the driver-side window…gaaahh! It was once again stuck in the open position, and the car was 100% vulnerable to scurvy, slime-fingered thieves.
I immediately called Vinny and said, “Yo, Vinny…the window is down again. Can you help me today or tomorrow or soon?” He said he’d been sidelined with a bad foot (gout) but that he’d search for a used mechanism and we could hook up the next day or certainly the day after.
The following night (i.e., Sunday) it was lightly raining as I sat in the Wilton Library parking lot. I turned the engine on and began listening to music. I was concerned, of course, about more rain water getting into the car through the open window. My left arm was sitting on the elbow rest but I wasn’t touching any buttons or window switches. I sat and listened to RandyNewman and thought about my life.
And then, like magic, the driver window activated itself….whrrrrrrr. The window went up halfway, stopped, thought about it for two or three seconds, and kept going up until the window was completely closed shut.
My mouth fell open. I gasped. It was a moment straight out of Irving Pichel‘s The Miracle of the Bells (’48). Just like the statues of St. Michael and the Virgin Mary slowly turn on their pedestals until they face the coffin of Alida Valli‘s Olga, the driver’s side window had closed itself…the hand of God or some tekekinetic force had intervened.
Vinny’s foot was still hurting yesterday (i.e., Monday afternoon) but we’ve planned on a Wednesday afternoon meet-up.
I've been presuming all along that the two strikes will slog on and on and ruin the red-carpet aspect of the early fall film festivals and half-destroy award season promotions until they finally end in October or November...best guess.
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My spitballs are (a) definitely Mark Meadows, (b) probably Rudy Guiliani, (c) possibly John Eastman. Further speculation?
Oh, and by the way? If I were Fani Willis I wouldn’t entertain ambitions to run for public office down the road. She’s presumably an excellent attorney but to say she has an awkward speaking style is putting it mildly. She reminded me of Tiffany Haddish announcing the Oscar noms in 2018. You can feel her struggling as she reads the particulars.
ESPN’s Michael Fletcher: “[Oher] alleges that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never adopted him. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
“The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story ‘that would not have existed without him.’”
In other words the Tuohys are shifty and slippery, baby, and Oher wants a cut of that money, honey.
The classy, movingly scored new teaser for Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix, 11.22 theatrical) tells us quite plainly that the film is less about the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and more about the 27-year marriage between Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (Carey Mulligan).
The emphasis, in fact, seems to be 60/40 in favor of Felicia. The trailer suggests, in fact, if it wasn’t called Maestro Cooper could have gone with something like Duet or The Two of Us. They were very comfortable with each other, the footage says…they vibed quite nicely.
While the mixed footage (color and monochrome) and choice editing allude to a difficult, imperfect relationship when Lenny and Felicia hit middle age (there are brief bits in which (a) Lenny hair-strokes a young hawk-nosed dude at a party and (b) Felicia catches Lenny making a pass at the same guy in a hallway) but Lenny being gay…well, it’s there but a trailer can’t delve into the fact that their marriage was based on a sensible and civilized arrangement — i.e., “wealthy famous gay guy married to beard wife for the purposes of public image, not to mention the kids.”
If anything the teaser is suggesting Lenny was bi. (He wasn’t.) That plus “their relationship was fraught and strained but always musical.”
As noted, Maestro will hit theatres on 11.22.23 (i.e., JFK day), and will thereby go head to head with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon. Can someone come up with a Barbenheimer moniker that blends the two? Okay, I’ve got one: Maestroleon.
Seriously — can someone please get to work on a Maestroleon poster concept?
Maestro will begin streaming on Netflix on 12.20.23. It will probably be given a special premiere showing at the 2023 New York Film Festival…maybe.
The odd thing is, the red sports car almost looks like a toy by today's standards. Look at those awful thin seats! But the buyer doing nose candy in the salesman's office is just right. YouTube's decision to hide the video is mystifying. It's mainly wall-to-wall comedy. All that happens violence-wise is the bouncer getting shot in the stomach, and then the salesman and the buyer. What's so awful about that?
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Vivek Ramaswany's hostility to the defense of Ukraine aside (and that's a huge issue to relegate to the sidelines), I sincerely agree with his "tyranny of a minority" riff. The respectful exchange happened yesterday at the Iowa State Fair.
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“All great black leaders get killed.” — quote from Warren Beatty‘s Bulworth (’98).
As it turns out Beatty’s Senator Jay Bulworth, one of the blackest white politicians who ever served in a fictional feature, gets killed also — shot by an insurance industry villain played by Paul Sorvino.
Bulworth is a Democrat from California and a total liberal establishment guy with all the usual noble sentiments and allegiances (photos of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King on his office wall) that have never amounted to much.
The film begins with Bulworth in deep despair and sick of all the bullshit. The film is basically about Bulworth saying “fuck it” and and just stating plain and straight how things really are, and hang the freakin’ consequences.
Friendo: “Last night I rewatched Bulworth for the first time since it came out in 1998 — a quarter-century ago. Very funny, totally outrageous, sometimes cringe-worthy and…oh, yeah, Halle Berry was totally hot.
“I got to thinking how this film would be received today. I know you’re gonna say the wokesters would go off on it, but maybe, just maybe, they’d see it for the satire it is. And maybe they’d understand that it asks the question ‘What would happen if a politician finally told the honest truth about our political system?’
“On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 76% approval rating, but not one of the critics listed is black. So how did black critics (outside of Elvis Mitchell) view it? How many influential black critics were even around back then?
“I know that black audiences didn’t attend screenings of Bulworth in droves, despite its focus upon black culture and featuring quite a few black characters. Maybe they felt vaguely alienated by Bulworth’s remarks about black behaviors (‘If you don’t put down the malt liquor and chicken wings and get behind someone other than a running back who stabs his wife, you’re never gonna get rid of someone like me!’). Or maybe not.
“Either way Bulworth, which cost round $30 million to produce, ended up with a relative slender gross of $29 million. It obviously didn’t connect with certain segments of the public for certain reasons. The only segment that seemed to support it were white, well-educated urban liberals.
“Bulworth has to be one of the most audacious mainstream films ever made. I think it deserves a reassessment.”
“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...