Nice location scouting on someone’s part. Unless they somehow erased the apes and tapirs from the original 2001 footage and replaced them with dolls and little girls. Either way, excellent work on Greta Gerwig‘s part.
“You’re a dilletante, a womanizer, unstable, theatrical, neurotic…”
I’m presuming this post won’t last long (attorneys will be swooping down) but given that millions of Avatar 2 viewers are watching this Oppenheimer teaser today, I don’t see what’s so ignoble about posting it here. The cat is out of the bag….let it run free.
Of all the Oppenheimer stars and costars, the only one I object to is Benny Safdie. Hollywood Elsewhere believes that performances by Benny Safdie need to be stopped, almost as much as EEAAO‘s path to Oscar glory needs to be stopped.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves (aka Paul Newman‘sd role in Fat Man and Little Boy), Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Rami Malek as Mystery Man #1, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush. Not to mention Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Josh Peck Gary Oldman (as Harry S. Truman), Alex Wolff, Tony Goldwyn and Casey Affleck.
Attention all loyal MAGA morons...if you're dumb enough to pay $99 for this, I'll take your money with a smile.
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Herewith is a 12.15.22 press release sent out on behalf of GLAAD, and it’s basically a complaint about how too many in the industry are failing to pass GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation. Here it is verbatim:
GLAAD 10TH ANNUAL STUDIO RESPONSIBILITY INDEX: PERCENTAGE OF LGBTQ-INCLUSIVE FILMS DROPS, AS DOES RACIAL DIVERSITY AND SCREEN TIME
This report found a transgender character in major studio film for the first time in five years, though there was a decrease in percentage of LGBTQ characters of color, LGBTQ women, and zero LGBTQ characters living with disabilities or HIV
All seven studios receive “Insufficient,” “Poor,” or “Failing” grades as GLAAD includes new evaluation of public advocacy on LGBTQ issues, employee resources, and political giving from studios and parent companies.
Only nine films released in 2021 by major studios passed GLAAD’s Vito Russo Test on LGBTQ representation.
Los Angeles, CA – Thursday, December 15, 2022 — GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released its tenth annual Studio Responsibility Index, a study that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by the seven film studio distributors that had the highest theatrical grosses from films released in the 2021 calendar year (January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2021) as reported by the box office database Box Office Mojo. These studios are Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.
For the full report, visit www.glaad.org/sri.
The same John Sturges western, 62 years old now and presumably somewhat darker because it’s been remastered for 4K. That’s all that 4K does since the naked eye can’t usually detect strong differences between 4K (3840 × 2160 pixel resolution) and 1080p. It brings in deeper shadows and whatnot. So all you’re left with is a darker image. I own a “good enough”, presumably less dark Bluray version, and that’s more than satisfactory.
Directed, written and produced by Zach Braff, A Good Person (UA Releasing, 3.24) seems to be about feelings, grief recovery, virtue-signalling…all that good stuff.
It’s the saga of a mousey young woman named Allison (Florence Pugh) struggling to recover from fatal-car-accident trauma and the heavy guilt that goes with that. Allison survived but a young POC male, apparently the son of Morgan Freeman, bought the farm. Allison is apparently part of a large extended family that is partly BIPOC, partly white-ass.
The copy line on the poster, however, is fatal: “Sometimes we find hope where we least expect it.”
Every time I watch Barry Lyndon‘s fist fight scene, my respect for the film and especially director Stanley Kubrick plummets slightly. The combatants, of course, are the quick and agile Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) and the brawny, red-bearded Corporal Toole (the late Pat Roach), but Kubrick’s instincts as a fight choreographer were atrocious.
Where did Kubrick-the-perfectionist get the idea that the fight would be even half-interesting if O’Neal ducked every wild air-punch thrown by Roach? Roach seems to have been told to fight like a drunken buffoon — to fight like the stupidest, most uncoordinated bare-knuckled boxer in English history and thereby miss O’Neal by several inches each and every time. If Roach had only managed to land a single jaw-blow…if only he’d managed to slug O’Neal once or twice in the chest or the rib cage. But no.
On 2.11.15, or a bit less than eight years ago, I reflected upon an Angelina Jolie-directed movie that had been quite the talked-about thing in late 2014 but abruptly disappeared after it was screened for press. No one has spoken about it since. It’s like it fell through a trap door.
In a piece called “Gone For Four Months,” I tried to explain the how and why of Unbroken‘s disappearance.
“There’s this imaginary guy I’ve been visiting at Cedars Sinai,” I began. “He went into a coma early last October and just came out of it yesterday. I wasn’t there when he awoke but he called today to say thanks for stopping by all those times. His mother told him about my four or five visits.
“Then he said he’d gone online this morning and visited the latest Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold charts, and he wanted to know what the hell had happened to Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, which was the Best Picture front-runner for weeks on end.
“Where’d it go?” he asked. “What happened? It was the leading Best Picture contender…it was all over but the shouting and the formalities. Every last default-minded, deferring-to-Dave Karger Oscar expert had it at the top of their lists. What’s the most likely film to win Best Picture? Why…Unbroken! What else? And now it’s vanished.”
I tried to break it to him easy. “What happened,” I explained, “is that Universal finally screened it, and a few days later the air had seeped out of the balloon. And then it just disappeared.” He asked me why. “It was the Christian torture-porn thing,” I said. What’s that? “There was something in the movie that said that the more a guy has been beaten and tortured, the braver and more beautiful and closer to God he is.” Oh, the guy said, suddenly sounding weaker and less curious.
“Right now the only chance Unbroken has at the Oscars is Roger Deakins‘ nomination for Best Cinematography,” I said. “But it would be surprising to a lot of people I know if Birdman‘s Emmanuel Lubezki loses out.”
I’ve always hated comic book films, but especially the DC Universe and particularly the Superman movies. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Take the brand out of the refrigerator, re-heat in a copper frying pan ad infinitum. The idea of another origin film or a young Superman film…suffocate me with a pillow.
Alas, James Gunn and Peter Safran are determined to bludgeon the remaining fan base into numbed submission. Plus they’ve deep-sixed poor Henry Cavill, 39. Jettisoned over being too old, I guess.
In keeping with the general industry sensibility of the last few years of de-emphasizing, degrading or ignoring whiteness, one wonders if Gunn and Safran’s new Superman will be gay, Black, Latinx or trans whatever? Or will Gunn-Safran go “wait, we have to be ahead of the curve…popcorn inhalers have hated woke stuff all along and woke has generally been losing money hand over fist and Joe Popcorn wants traditional guy stuff anyway to let’s hire a younger Cavill type…”
The same rationale applies to casting the new James Bond, a role that would fit Cavill like a glove.
In early March of ’05 I attended Argentina’s Mar del Plata international film festival. Four or five days, as I recall. Before flying back to Los Angeles I was able to spend nine hours in Buenos Aires. Here’s what I filed on 3.10.05:
“I flew out of Mar del Plata around 12:30 and landed at the slightly east-of-downtown Buenos Aires aeropuerto an hour later, and went straight into town to nose around and explore. I had about nine hours before my plane for Los Angeles was due to leave around 10:45 pm.
“I left my bags at the Hotel Intercontinental and walked over to the Casa Rosada, the ornate, three-story presidential residence with the famed second-floor balcony that Eva Peron addressed her followers from. (The paint isn’t exactly rose — it’s more like a fleshy off-pink). I walked around the San Telmo district and visited the open-air flea market. A big crowd was watching a couple dance the tango. I gave them ten pesos when they passed the hat.
“Director Fabian Beilinsky (Nine Queens) told me to go to a restaurant in San Telmo specializing in Argentine beef, called La Brigada (Estados Unidos 465). The aroma of perfectly-broiled steaks was transporting. I could tell right away it’s a class joint, although a bit too popular with the local swells. People were milling around outside and some kind of ticketing system was in place that I couldn’t figure out. I eventually gave up.
“I then rented a bike and pedaled all the way up to Palermo, in the eastern section of town. Palermo is the emerging hip section, like Manhattan’s Soho was in the early to mid ’70s.
“Buenos Aires is almost completely flat all the way around town, so biking anywhere is no sweat. You just have to be fearless about buses and crazy cab drivers. I travelled about five or six miles, all in.
“I ate at a small cafe/restaurant on a quiet, tree-lined street in south Palermo, called Viejo Indecente (El Salvador 4960). It has an alternate name of Maldito Salvador, which is what it’s called on the business card and on the website .
“There was an attractive woman with Tourette’s Syndrome sitting behind me. She didn’t seem to be swearing as much as shouting. It was kind of a cross between a loud scream and a loud sneeze. (‘Aaaggghh‘!) I kept asking myself as I ate, ‘Do I want to move outside or something?’
“Buenos Aires is a flat, somewhat hot and sweaty city with superb restaurants and deeply beautiful women, some with bedroom eyes and many with long slender toes. The best part for me was the absurdly low prices. Everything is one-third the cost. It put me in the greatest mood not to have to spend any serious money. I felt like a trust-fund kid.
“I cruised past the brick-walled cemetery where Eva’s remains are entombed, and the whole area around it was covered with T-shirted tourists, swarming like ants. The nearby restaurants were all cheap fast-food joints (McDonald’s, etc.). The vibe felt lurid and grotesque. I peddled on without stopping.
“B.A. is very much the bustling, pulsing place — crowds, music, culture, intensity — but the buses spew out exhaust like there’s no tomorrow, and you’re forced to breathe in the fumes as you’re peddling along, and with all the heat and clamor and the lack of much in the way of old-world architecture I began to conclude that Buenos Aires isn’t as sexy or intriguing as Paris, Rome or Prague. Or Berlin, even.
“But at least it’s gritty and alive, and I’m sure it’s a richer thing for X-factor people who live and work there and congregate at the right places.”
THR columnist Scott Feinberg doesn't have any supernatural insights into award season positionings, but in terms of Best Picture predicting he does have the ability to pass along Robert Louis Stevenson's "black spot", so to speak.
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