Jeff Wells

Clooney’s New Film Sidestepping Woke Casting Criteria

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There were at least two reasons why George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar, an adaptation of J.R. Moehringer‘s autobiography, didn’t work as well it could or should have.

I’m speaking of Clooney’s virtue-signaling, inclusion-mandate casting calls.

Example #1 was casting young Daniel Ranieri as a 10 year-old version of Tye Sheridan. The resemblance factor was less than zero as Rainieri looked Southern Italian or Middle Eastern.

Example #2 was Clooney’s decision to change the identity of a wealthy Westport white girl named Sydney, whom Moehringer fell in love with during his time at Yale and who represents the unattainable ideal for a working-class kid from Manhasset…Clooney changed Sydney from a blonde, Daisy Buchanan-like character with a small nose, ample breasts and whiter-than-white parents, into a beautiful woman of color (Briana Middleton) and her parents into an interracial couple (mom is played by Quincy Tyler Bernstine).

This was presentism, of course — i.e., Clooney and producers Grant Heslov and Ted Hope trying to groove along with the ethos of progressive woke Hollywood.

And yet Clooney doesn’t appear to have cast his latest film, The Boys in the Boat, a mid 1930s sports saga based on Daniel James Brown’s 2013 book of the same name, with the same eccentric pretensions.

As best as I can tell, Clooney has adhered to (gasp!) historical realism in casting this true-life saga about a University of Washington boat-rowing crew that represented the U.S. during the 1936 Summer Olympic games in Berlin.

By this I mean no actors of color were cast as crew members, and no LGBTQs were involved. Because the team and its trainers, working-class natives of Seattle, were (gasp!) regular-ass hetero white guys, and for whatever reason Clooney hasn’t tried to fudge this fact.

Pic costars Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike, Peter Guinness and Alec Newman.

The Wiki page says that Amazon MGM will open The Boys in the Boat on on Christmas day — Monday, 12.25. That can’t be right.

Where’s the teaser?

Joe “One and Done” Biden (New Rules Version)

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“There is a term for Joe Biden, but not two.”

“If I’m on a plane and a voice says, ‘This is your captain speaking, Buzz Aldrin’…I’m getting off.”

“At some point, perception becomes reality. What matters is that voters think Biden is too old. What matters is that he’s going to lose.”

Posted on 9.24.23: Please read Cenk Uygur’s 9.22 Newsweek piece that argues a statistical likelihood that President Biden might lose to Donald Trump.

Plus a new Washington Post-ABC News poll (1,006 adults contacted between 9.15 and 9.20) has The Beast ten points ahead of Biden, 52 percent vs. 42 percent.

Not to mention this Hill opinion piece by Derek Hunter (9.20).

Semi-Catastrophic Weather Makes Life Less Boring

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I’m not saying that extreme inconvenience or suffering due to flooding is a good thing. It obviously isn’t, and I certainly feel badly for those tristate area residents who’ve been impacted. But gullywhumper rain definitely cuts through that flatline feeling that we all feel from time to time.

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Venal Female Characters

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I don’t regard most of moviedom’s stand-out female villains as odious or reprehensible. Because most of those that come to mind are cartoonish — broadly drawn, lacking any semblance of realism or subtlety…fiendish stereotypes, outlandish behavior, etc.

Glenn Close‘s Cruella DeVille, Margaret Hamilton‘s Wicked With of the West, Angelina Jolie‘s Maleficent are histrionic, flamboyantly written comic-book figures…satirical cliches, basically created for children.

In Get Out, I didn’t believe Alison Williams‘ evil racist girlfriend for one single millisecond. Kathy Bates‘ “Annie Wilkes” from Misery (’90) is another over-the-top fanatic. Even Louise Fletcher‘s Nurse Ratched isn’t “real” — she’s more of a personification of a drab and repressive system that stifles the human spirit.

If you eliminate the third-act murder of Neil Patrick Harris, Rosamund Pike‘s “Amy Dune” from Gone Girl is slightly more real-worldish; ditto Close’s Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction, although Alex isn’t demonic as much as tragically demented.

Honestly? When you tabulate all the thousands of films I’ve seen, the female character I’ve despised the most in terms of actual life-resembling behavior is Diane Venora‘s “Liane” Wigand, the spineless wife of Russell Crowe‘s Jeffrey Wigand in Michael Mann‘s The Insider.

The 1999 drama depicts Liane as a shallow, insulated security queen who leaves the embattled Wigand, taking their kids with her, when the going gets too tough.

Sidenote: Liane is a fictional creation — 23 years ago the ex-wife of the actual whistleblower, named Lucretia Nimocks, told N.Y. Post journalist Jeane MacIntosh “that’s not the way it happened at all.”

Liane is at the top of my list because I regard cowardice and disloyalty as the most abhorrent human qualities on the planet earth.

Strange Thinking

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Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix, 11.22) is an even-steven two-hander about the occasionally turbulent marriage between conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). Both are obviously playing leads.

I still haven’t seen it, but performance-wise the buzz since Venice has been that Mulligan decisively outpoints Cooper.

Netflix’s Maestro one-sheet clearly states that Mulligan owns the spotlight.

It sounds as if IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio has seen the film, given that he’s written that “the show is stolen from Cooper by Mulligan.”

And yet two days ago Variety‘s Clayton Davis sugggested that Mulligan should go for Best Supporting Actress. This is advisable, he feels, because the competition from Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone is too formidable.

Davis doesn’t mention, of course, that Gladstone’s campaign is pretty much about the woke identity militia, and that her actual performance is no more than sufficient. She certainly has no “big” moments. I could even call it an underwhelming performance (i.e., she mainly just seethes and glowers and lies in bed during the film’s second half) but the woke mob would resort to their usual inferences.

Feinstein Belongs To The Ages

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a prominent veteran of California politics for over half a century, has died at age 90.

A Democrat and strong activist liberal from San Francisco, six terms as a U.S. Senator and the state’s senior senator since ’93, three terms as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 (she succeeded Mayor George Moscone after his 1978 murder) to 1988, etc.

More recently (and certainly within the last five or so years) Feinstein became not only a symbol of age diminishment but of the same kind of obstinate refusal to accept reality that we’ve recently seen from Sen. Mitch McConnell and which we may see down the road from President Joe Biden.

Big-time politicians never, ever resign over aging issues. They either get voted out or die — there’s no third way.

Who will Gov. Gavin Newsom appoint to serve out Feinstein’s term? Will he choose a caretaker or one of the three announced candidates for Feinstein’s seat — Adam Schiff, Congressperson Barbara Lee, and Rep. Katie Porter?

If Newsom picks one of these three, he’ll be giving that person a huge leg-up in the ’24 primary.

Pure Pumping Enjoyment

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It’s been 15 days years since Revolucian‘s Christian Bale temper tantrum mixtape — sourced from the set of Terminator Salvation in ’08. I really love it as a piece of music. It’s a masterpiece. I especially love playing it while driving, writing, getting dressed.

YouTube guy #1: “When I’m angry, I blast this song and dance-rage the tension out.”

YouTube guy #2: “This has been on my gym playlist for 10 years. Still makes me laugh.”

“Poor Things” Breakdown

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HE: “When I think of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (\Searchlight, 12.8), I think of a one-two effect. First I think of Frankenstein’s sexually vigorous daughter, and then a back-from-the-grave woman whose worldview evolves from wide-eyed wonderment into critical male-shirking wokeness. I also believe that Emma Stone has the Best Actress Oscar in the bag.”

Friendo: “When I think of Poor Things, I first think of a lurching, amusing and sometimes audacious [effort] that feels second-rate-ish at the end of the day. Then I think of the in-your-face woke design (Ms. Barbie Frankenstein in a world of angry, damaged, predatory men!), then I think of all that sex and how it’s really kind of gratuitous (unless this were 1972) but wow, it sure is going to help sell the movie!”

Posted on 9.9.23:

Respect for Michael Gambon

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Michael Gambon has passed at age 82.

In a 5.7.07 interview with Future Movies‘ Adam Tanswell, Gambon was asked what went into playing Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. He answered by discussing his approach to being an alleged character actor.

“I don’t have to ‘play’ anyone really,” Gambon said. “I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat. I never ease into a role. Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality. I’m not really a character actor at all.”

In other words, Gambon’s characters in The Insider (’99) and Open Range (’03) — respectively Brown and Williamson CEO Thomas Sandefur and ornery Irish bully boy Denton Baxter — represented aspects of Gambon himself.

These, in any event, are my two favorite Gambon performances. He was a very fine stage actor, but you can have the Potter films and even The Singing Detective, which I found repellent (that awful skin condition) and never liked.

Zvyagintsev Back on The Horse

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HE is heartened and gratified to read that legendary Russian helmer Andrey Zvagintsev (Loveless, Leviathan, Ellena) is finally back in the game.

Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy is reporting that he’ll begin directing Jupiter, a politically-tinged melodrama, sometime in the spring of ’24. Shooting will happen Spain and France. Zvyagintsev currently lives in Paris.

For roughly two years many of us weren’t sure if Zvaygintsev would even make another film, given his nearly fatal brush with Covid beginning in June 2021.

Wiki exceprt: “On June 25, 2021 Zvyagintsev received the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. On the 3rd day after vaccination, he had a fever of 38-39 °C and was taken to the hospital. On July 8, he was admitted to intensive care. During his treatment in the hospital, he contracted sepsis as a result of contracting a nosocomial infection resistant to antibiotics.”

I know absolutely nothing, but I can’t help but wonder if Zvagintasev might have been deliberately virus-bombed by Putin-allied goons, considering the fact that Leviathian was directly and very sharply critical of the malevolent Russian leader. This is completely baseless speculation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one day evidence comes to light, etc.

Sometime in July ’21, or 26 months ago, Zvagintzev succumbed to an extremely serious form of Covid, which resulted in his leaving a Russian hospital and being transferred to an intensive care ward in Germany. Why the transfer out of Russia? What do Russian hospitals lack in terms of treating lung infections that German hospitals are better at?

A report stated that Zvyagintsev’s lungs were 90% infected, or conditions to that effect.

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