CNN’s Don Lemon has been axed effective immediately. This was obviously not a good day for this to happen with the competing story of Tucker Carlson‘s departure nipping at Lemon’s heels or vice versa. Two major-media news headliner departures announced within an hour!
There are obviously four women who helped to push Lemon out, either directly or consequentially — (1) Nikki Haley, the 50something Republican presidential candidate whom Lemon claimed was not “in her prime”; (2) Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel, whose 4.5 article reported about the news anchor’s alleged “misogyny at CNN“; (3) Lemon’s CNN co-anchor Kaitlan Collins, who clashed with Lemon over bristly attitudes and diva fits, and (4) White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who recently refused to be interviewed by Lemon.
When I think fondly of the 2019 films that will endure and grow in esteem as the years fall by…well, we all have our favorites. But in my mind at least and in a perfect world, the films that should have won the Best Picture Oscar are not, no offense, Parasite, which did win, and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the first runner-up.
I realize, of course, that almost no HE commenters agree with me, but I still say that the Best Picture Oscar champ should have been Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman.
Failing that, the most deserving winners could or should have been, in a perfect world, the following: Kent Jones‘ Diane, Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell.
It’s absurd to mention Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete in this context, but it’s a truly jarring, trail-blazing film that I’ll never forget. I wanted to forget Parasite after my second viewing — I didn’t dislike it, but I found it underwhelming.
The Best Documentary Oscar should have been won by A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name.
Posted on 8.18.20: A couple of decades hence young cineastes will ask their older brethren, “Explain again why a well-made but not especially overwhelming social criticism drama from Bong Joon-ho won the Best Picture Oscar instead of this obviously superior Martin Scorsese gangster epic, especially considering the fact that The Irishman didn’t have anything like that Parasite scene in which a family of con artists welcomes the one person in the world who has a motive to rat them all out, and yet they let her in during a rainstorm while they’re all drunk and dishevelled…why did everyone give that scene a pass again?”
Director-star and series co-creator Bill Hader is directing all eight episodes of Barry‘s final season, and the calibre of understated black comedy is fairly astonishing. Hader’s directing instincts are easily the equal of Steven Soderbergh‘s — he tones it down in every scene, and makes it work just so. The witness protection conference hit scene is hilarious and mesmerizing.
During last night’s Barry episode (“you’re charming“) we all saw Guillermo del Toro play “El Toro”, some kind of dandified, cane-toting, soft-spoken bad guy who visits Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby) to discuss Barry’s forthcoming murder. Toro has arranged for a queasy-looking character (Fred Armisen) to perform the hit during a witness protection meeting between Barry and various law officials.
It was just a cameo role, but it was very cool to see GDT delivering lines from a place of quiet confidence and with a dry understated manner. “Holy shit…there he is!” I said to Jett and Cait. I immediately wrote GDT a congratulatory note. And yet…
Guillermo was playing an allegedly fearsome criminal, the kind of sociopath who wouldn’t blink an eye at hiring a hitman. The emphasis, of course, was on dry humor with GDT talking about the difference between a podcast and TikTok exposure, but honestly? The undercurrent of menace wasn’t there. Because Guillermo couldn’t bury his humanity. He’s one of the gentlest and most compassionate people in the film industry, and simply couldn’t manage to “become” a sociopath. But at least he gave it a shot. File this under “hoot-level cameo.”
Two days later Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver taped a segment that criticized the American bumblefuck brigade for their bigoted reactions to the Mulvaney campaign. The show typically tapes on Sunday at 6:15 pm. Given Oliver’s stated concern about dealing with old news (or failing to deal with new news), it seemed derelict that he didn’t at least mention Heinerscheid’s decision to take a “leave of absence“, which of course was not voluntary and clearly reflected concerns by Anhauser-Busch senior management.
It was reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal that Heinerscheid’s boss, Daniel Blake, has also been made to walk the plank.
HE to wokester prigs: 42 and 1/2 years ago I was hitting hip parties and bars in London and hanging with some Time Out pallies and listening frequently to Bow Wow Wow, who were fresh and explosive and kicking it in early December of '80.
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I saw Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant last night, and was honestly blown away. As in amazed, startled, taken aback. And at the same time mesmerized and soul-panged. It’s a “do the right thing” rescue film against a ruggedly realistic war setting, and except for the formulaic (if irresistably satisfying) final act, it’s pretty close to perfect. Really.
Is it the best Middle Eastern war film since The Hurt Locker? Yeah, I think so. I liked it better that Lone Survivor.
Ritchie, to me, has always been an insincere fiddle-faddler and a cynical wanker, and all of a sudden he’s made a masterful, pared-to-the-bone Afghanistan war film for the ages? Pruned-down realism, emotional restraint, somber emotional tone…what the hell happened to the Ritchie I’ve known since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (’98), or over the last quarter-century?
All these years he’s been saying “I’m a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul” and then he’s suddenly saying “wait, scratch that…I’m now a human being with a soul, and I’ve made a lean-and-mean war film that believes in honor and paying your debts and indisputable realism”?
HE to friendo (Friday, 4.21, 8:50 pm): “The Ritchie film is amazing. How could he make a slick, cynical piece of empty shit like Operation Fortune and then turn around and make The Covenant?”
Friendo to HE: “Indeed…How could he make these slick, empty-fake gangster films for 25 years and then make The Covenant? Really glad you liked it!”
Based on a script co-penned by Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, The Covenant feels like it’s based on a true story. It isn’t, but who cares? Remember that hairy combat sequence in TheHurtLocker in which Ralph Fiennes played a pivotal role? That’s what The Convenant mostly feels like apart from a Santa Clarita interlude and the gung-ho finale.
Jake Gyllenhaal is rooted and riveting as U.S. Army sergeant John Kinley, extra-sharp and focused and always looking for trouble out of the corner of his eyes.
But you know who steals this film? The second-billed, 45-year-old Dar Salim as Ahmed, Kinley’s interpreter who’s just as much in the crosshairs as Kinley, and who rescues the wounded Kinley from brutal Taliban termination during Act Two, and in turn is rescued by Kinley in Act Three. (Ritchie’s film was originally titled The Interpreter.)
You can’t take your eyes off Salim through the film, and the only time he doesn’t quite punch through and almost recedes into the background is during the thrilling, action-packed finale, which I didn’t mind at all because it’s truly wonderful to see the bad guys get ripped to pieces with burning hot lead.
And then a certain gut-punch wells up during the end credits, when we’re reminded that more than 300 Afghan interpreters and their families have been murdered by the Taliban, with God knows how many more currently in hiding, despite U.S. authorities having pledged to give them gold-plated visas for travelling to the U.S.
Seriously shot up and sinking in and out of consciousness, Gyllenhaal is carried up and down mountain trails and shielded from Taliban homicidals by Salim. He’s sent back home while Salim remains in-country, but there’s no peace in his soul…not a chance. Jake / Kinley knows he has to covertly return to Afghanistan and somehow get Salim / Ahmed and his family out of Afghanistan and into U.S. soil. It’s not easy and certainly not inexpensive, but the debt must be honored. Eventually it is.
It was only a few weeks ago, in my review of Operation Fortune, that I was insisting that Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. The Covenant has proved me wrong. He may revert to hackery and whoredom down the road, but from this moment on I will never again call him a soul-less hustler. He has earned new stripes with this film.
Having arrived in the mid to late ’90s and therefore born with the internet in their blood and visually locked into screens, Zoomers are regarded with suspicion by GenX and certainly by boomers, and in some cases loathed.
They’re presumed to be short-attention-spanners who are not that good with face-to-face interactions (i.e., office environments). Self-centered, snooty or derisive with elders and reluctant (and in some cases unwilling) to negotiate or compromise.
Not to mention obstinate, living in their own digital realm, great at multi-tasking, quick to condemn and even boycott (i.e., cancel) those whom they regard as not up to speed in terms of progressive social issues.
They’re regarded as whiners, political hard-heads and job-hoppers…basically a pain in the ass.
If a couple of GenZ pilots were to magically time-travel to Barranca, the port-of-call in Only Angels Have Wings, they almost certainly wouldn’t last five minutes. Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) would see right through their entitled attitudes and dismiss their worthless asses before their first flight. He wouldn’t even let them drink at the bar. Plus they wouldn’t understand the emotional meaning of Thomas Mitchell‘s two-headed coin.
During last night’s “Overtime” segment, Bill Maher got into it with psychotherapist and sex educator Esther Perel. She ducked and dithered over the Dalai Lama’s “suck my tongue, kid” moment, and Bill challenged her sincerity in deciding to say nothing.
HE viewpoint: An 87 year-old holy man asking a tweener to suck his tongue is obviously perverse. One could go so far as to call it diseased.
What possible rationale could the 14th Dalai Lama have had in his head before saying this? My soul is so radiantly merged and perfectly harmonized with the infinite stream that whatever I, in a certain sense a mere mortal with the earthly name of Gyalwa Rinpoche…whatever I might say or think or do is so small and puny and insignificant that it can’t possibly interfere with the cosmic overall that represents the centrality of my being?
I am the Spiritual Bliss King of Tibet — I can do anything.
Whenever I run into Martin Scorsese, I say “Marty! Kundun! I liked it! I don’t want you to suck my tongue because you’re almost my age, for God’s sake, but I love you as much as the tweener child in question. We all need to offer the tips of our tongues to each other!”
Being woke refers to “waking up to invisible alleged societal injustices, based on genetically inherited attributes — race, sex/gender and sexual orientation. And further, it creates a heirarchy, based on these genetic attributes, that says you’re either an oppressor or a member of an oppressed class.”
This is it — couldn’t be simpler or more concisely stated.
