Jeff Wells

Okay, it’s not intuition — the Toronto reviews made the situation clear. I don’t want difficulty with this film. I loved The Father. On the other hand I can’t stand the kid (Zen McGrath). Instant loathing. Opens on 11.25.

The new Tulsa King trailer makes the forthcoming Paramount + series (debuting on 11.13) seem like a deadpan crime comedy. I’m presuming it’s actually not since series co-creator Taylor Sheridan and co-screenwriter co-exec producer Terence Winter don’t do comedies as a rule, but who knows? I’ll tell you what I know — the trailer made me chuckle three or four times. Sylvester Stallone is playing the persona, of course, with a little tongue-in-cheek.

Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion (Netflix, 12.123) screened last weekend at both the Hampton’s Film Festival and the Middleburg Film Festival. I’ve spoken to a couple of fellas who saw it but there’s plenty of time to get into reactions down the road. Okay, I’ll share a few.

There are, it turns out, a few Last of Sheila echoes but it does opt for its own plot, which restarts and constantly goes back upon itself toward the end. Somebody dies, yes, but not whom you might think. Yes, Daniel Craig‘s Detective Benoit Blanc is depicted as gay but so what? Janelle Monae is very good, one opined. Ditto Kate Hudson, said another. Longish, they both said. The title refers to the all-glass Greek island home owned by Ed Norton‘s “Miles Bron”, an Elon Musk-like tech billionaire. Dave Bautista plays “Duke Cody”, a YouTube star and men’s rights activist in the Joe Rogan mold.

Speaking of suspected or supposed gayness, here’s a Peter Ustinov Spartacus story [starts at 15:59]: “The [unit] publicist, Sonia Wolfson, said to me, ‘Oh, Peter, steer clear of the commissary today…Hedda Hopper is there and she doesn’t want to see you.’ Well, this was like a red rag to a bull. I didn’t want to see Hedda Hopper either but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be seen by her. So I said ‘what’s wrong?’ and Sonia said ‘no, it’s too embarassing’ but I eventually wheedled it out of her. Hedda Hooper had said to someone that I was so brilliant as Nero in Quo Vadis that I’ve got to be queer. Well, of course, I went straight to the commissary, went up to her and said ‘how are you….hah-hah-hah-hah!’ and behaved in the way of a rather gross English sergeant, and we never had [any such trouble from Hopper] again.”

Another excellent Ustinov story begins at the 23:00 mark.

Late to the conversation: Storied critic Amy Taubin has viciously trashed Todd Field’s Tar, and in ways that struck me as mystifying. She’s called it (a) “a dreadful movie,” (b) “One of the stupidest movies I have seen in long time”…odd; (c) “Absolutely a one-note movie [that] turns into one of the most racist shit I have ever seen in a serious movie…I loathed this movie and I think [Cate Blanchett‘s] performance is terrible.”

The racist stuff, in Taubin’s view, comes at the every end when Blanchett’s deplatformed conductor Lydia Tar goes on a kind of banishmnent tour in Southeast Asia. Taubin deplores the use of cosplauing brown-skinned Asians at a Comic-Con-like gathering. I didn’t take the slightest offense at this portion of the film, which is basically a glum denoument.

There is, however, a racist moment early on when a male BPIOC pangender student of Blanchett’sexpresses a dislike of Johann Sebastian Bach, due to the 18th-century composer’s whiteness and “misogyny” (i.e., having been married twice).

There’s no merit whatsoever to dismissing Blanchett’s performance….not worth debating.
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Taubin delivered these remarks four days ago during episode #142 of Nicolas Rapol‘s “The Last Thing I Saw.” I happened upon her comments via a 10.17 post on Jordan Ruimy’s “World of Reel.”

Just as diamonds are created under high temperatures and great pressure, grade-A or award-quality movies have never been gently sculpted into existence. They’ve always been produced under stressful, contentious, argumentative or even arduous conditions.

Hollywood has always been a rough-and-tumble industry. Over the last century the toughest wolves in the forest, attracted by the money and artistic acclaim and access to romantic opportunities, have come to Hollywood to compete and struggle and scrap their way to the top of the heap.

Or at least, that’s how things were until progressive aspirational purity became the industry watchword and Hollywood became a town run…intimidated, I should say…by a combination of fanatical wokesters and mainstream industry players who are terrified of being accused of harboring the wrong attitudes or beliefs.

Deadline‘s Michael Cieply explained the situation brilliantly this morning. He basically said that in terms of Academy membership, meritocracy is being phased out while equity is the new mandate.

“For the last few years**, AMPAS has been behaving less like an industry adjunct and more like a contemporary, socially conscious university.

“Admission [to the Academy], once based on merit and a semi-corrupt buddy system (akin to old-school ‘legacy’ enrollments), is now openly grounded in a college-like holistic approach that weighs achievement alongside identity factors.

“The mix is supposed to yield a membership, a movie community, and film content, that are somehow more diverse than in the past.

“Thus industry standing is no longer something you grab by the throat [or otherwise] achieved through wit, wile, connections, unfettered ambition, and, sometimes, talent.

“Rather, one is [now] granted status, based partly on identity, by the Academy and its outreach programs, and by associated and similarly oriented mechanisms at companies, guilds, film schools, festivals and so on.

“Achievement [still] matters,” Cieply notes. “But, as in many contemporary college admissions, it is just one in a basket of considerations.”

** since wokesters began to take over in ’18, he means.

No offense but I’m starting to really hate these primitive, simpleton-level, supposed-conversation-starter Twitter posts. Ten minutes ago I saw one that said “North by NorthWest 1959…like or dislike?” Why did you capitalize the second “w” in Northwest, man? The movie title doesn’t so why did you?

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Hats off to the NASS techies. The only thing wrong with this is that infuriating violet tint on the autos and buses. Otherwise it’s amazing. As one of the YouTube commenters has pointed out, the past has never looked or sounded this sharp or clear or life-like. Who cares if it’s colorized or if the street sounds are generic?

Someday a filmmaker will figure a way to integrate a higher rendering of historical footage with newly shot footage of name-brand actors.

This photo is actually new. (I think.) All he did was shave, drop ten pounds, and forsake the whiskers and man bun.

Message #1: “Have you revisited this scene? The serious girlfriend chastising the insouciant lout for being the proverbial overgrown adolescent. That behavior used to be the goal to avoid becoming the establishment and our parents. Now not just women are sounding like the cliched frustrated girlfriend, but society at large. We’re breaking up with Bill Murray and anarchist comedians.”

Message #1: “Some friends and comedy writers were talking about how it used to be a compliment to be kidded, ribbed and insulted. While these sort of sexual preference jokes are extinct, we can feel nostalgic for the time when someone as lofty as Jack Nicholson can take a gag at his own expense like a man and play along with it. Imagine the audience response if an Oscar host were to tell the ‘woke up with a poodle head in my bed’ joke. Technically 18 or 19 years ago, but boy, have times changed!

The elocutionary skills of British character actor Henry Daniell were more than formidable — they were delicious. He made the speaking of British-accented English a thing of beauty.

Consider Daniell’s cameo in the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty (an uncredited role as “British chief court-martial admiral”) and particularly his reading of post-verdict commentary, which begins at 1:07. The dialogue is very precise and officer-class military proper, and yet curiously emotional when Daniell gets around to explaining and in fact lamenting the reason for the mutiny.

Daniell: “The articles [of war] are fallible, as any articles are bound to be. No code can cover all contingencies. We cannot put justice aboard our ships in books. Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain or they be not aboard.”

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[Starting at 4:15]: “Let me try to translate — not endorse but translate — to liberal America why [so many Republican candidates are submental animals]. Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Donald Trump or any number of egregious assholes [whom] Republicans have backed is, in their minds, the worse a candidate is, the more it says to Democrats ‘do you see how much we don’t like what you’re selling?

“All that socialism and identity politics and victimhood and over-sensitivity and cancel culture and white self-loathing and forcing complicated ideas about race and sex on kids too young to understand [them]? Literally anything would be better than that,’ they’re saying.

“That’s their view. That’s why you can be a really bad dude in Republican politics, and it’s not a deal-breaker.

“This is a clear difference between the parties. Democrats also think the other side is an existential threat, but their response is not to nominate sickos to make a point.”