Daily

Worried About Warren

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From “Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her,” an 8.15 N.Y. Times report by Jonathan Martin:

“Even as she demonstrates why she is a leading candidate for the party’s nomination, Elizabeth Warren is facing persistent questions and doubts about whether she would be able to defeat President Trump in the general election. The concerns, including from her admirers, reflect the head-versus-heart debate shaping a Democratic contest increasingly being fought over the meaning of electability and how to take on Mr. Trump.

“Interviews with more than three dozen Democratic voters and activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina this summer, at events for Ms. Warren as well as other 2020 hopefuls, yield a similar array of concerns about her candidacy.

“These Democrats worry that her uncompromising liberalism would alienate moderates in battleground states who are otherwise willing to oppose the president. Many fear Ms. Warren’s past claims of Native American ancestry would allow Mr. Trump to drown out her policy message with his attacks and slurs against her. They cite her professorial style and Harvard background to argue that she might struggle to connect with voters from more modest circumstances than hers, even though she grew up in a financially strained home in Oklahoma.

“And there are Democrats who, chastened by Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, believe that a woman cannot win in 2020.”

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Genuinely Terrified

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Pete Buttigieg, the only candidate I feel truly excited about, is fourth or fifth-ranked in the polls. Typewriter Joe, way ahead in terms of likely Democratic voters, is a decent, reasonable guy but a stumbling, doddering gaffe machine who’ll be nearly 80 if and when he’s inaugurated in January 2021. The two most progressive-minded candidates, … Read more

Better Than Expected

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Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Annapurna, 8.16), based on Maria Semple’s same-titled 2012 novel, is basically Diary of a Mad Architect.

It bears little relation to Frank Perry‘s Diary of a Mad Housewife except for the “mad” part, and even then it’s a different kind — very Seattle-ish and 21st Century, extremely fickle and antsy and yet, for me, diverting and almost fun in a contact-high kind of way.

Bernadette was originally slated to open on 5.11.18, and then was bumped four times (11.19.18, 3.22.19, 8.9.19, 8.16.19). That’s always a sign that something’s wrong, but guess what? Linklater’s film is spotty and imperfect, but it half-works. Make that two-thirds.

This is largely because of Cate Blanchett’s nervous, neurotic, irritated performance as Bernadette Fox, a frustrated ex-architect who’s floundering and miserable because she’s given up her drafting table. As her friend Paul Jellinek (Larry Fishburne) says, “People like you must create…if not, you become a menace to society.”

And because she’s become an agoraphobe. Because she despises conventional living and the Seattle mothers sorority whom she’s expected to pal around with. She loves her daughter Bee (Emma Nelson), who’s extremely loyal and bright, and is on mildly ambivalent terms with her software-genius millionaire husband, Elgie (Billy Crudup).

Bernadette is a prickly pear (along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Howard Roark, Frank Gehry and every other architect worth his or her salt) but I understood her — I recognized a kindred spirit. And I honestly liked and related to her more when she was agitated and dismissive and hoarding medication than when she was smiling and creatively fulfilled and hugging Elgin and Bee during the South Pole finale.

Because in a way Bernadette is a cousin of Randall P. McMurphy — she’s been wounded over an architectural debacle that happened in Los Angeles, and she really hates conventional mindsets and people who cluck-cluck and go along, and there’s just no peace in her heart when it comes to most manifestations of middle-class normality.

That aside I didn’t believe that Bernadette and family would live in a 19th century, vine-covered Edgar Allen Poe mansion. Nobody would allow that much flora to cover and in fact smother their home. No architect would allow that much rot and ruination to affect his/her living space.

And it made no sense at all for a landscape architect to advise that vines and bushes be removed from a hilly area in the middle of Seattle’s rainy season.

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Springsteen Deliverance

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In The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani‘s life (standup comedian, Uber driver) is restricted by his Pakistani-born parents, who expect him to follow tradition by marrying a Pakistani woman. In Bohemian Rhapsody Rami Malek‘s “Freddie” Bulsara encounters disapproval from his Indian Parsi father. In Yesterday, Hamesh Pital‘s life as a struggling musician is partly complicated by … Read more

Bucket of Water

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[7:25] Anderson Cooper: “Isn’t the Republican party now Trump’s?” Anthony Scaramucci: “No, no…it’s like I told John Berman. It’s like the green witch.” [Note: Mooch is referring to Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.] “Once you throw the water on the green witch and she starts melting, those gray soldiers said ‘hey, Dorothy, we’re sorry about this. We were behind the green witch because of the perception of her power…okay?’ If [Republicans] come to him as a unit…they know I’m right, they know I’m right. They’re just afraid to say it because they don’t want to get primary-ed, they don’t want to get Trump twitter lit up, like the big cyber bully that he is.”

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By My Sights…

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…as close to perfect as a gently erotic, deeply passionate period drama could be. Simultaneously restrained and highly charged, and intensely performed by Noemie Merlant (as a portraitist) and Adele Haenel (as a young woman reluctant to be married off, presumably for reasons of orientation). Director Celine Sciamma‘s minimalist approach delivers the right tone, touch … Read more

Least Problematic Bong Joon-ho

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Before Parasite, I’d seen four films by respected Korean director Bong Joon-ho — The Host (’06), Mother (’09), Snowpiercer (’13) and Okja (’17). My reactions were the same all along — I admired the craft and energy, didn’t believe the stories. To me it seemed obvious that Bong was more into high impact movie-ness than … Read more

Silverman Heroically Stands Up To Cancel Culture

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“Cancel culture”, which has been calling the shots for the last two or three years, is basically about a consensus view among p.c. progressives that ruining careers of this or that sexist abuser or criminal will send the strongest message to other potential abusers to stop and desist. Younger progressive women are understandably the main believers and drivers. Certain abusers obviously deserve cancelling, others are or were more deserving of temporary ostracism (Aziz Ansari), and a third group arguably doesn’t deserve to be on anyone’s hit list at all.

I’ve heard and read that “cancel culture” would love to deepsix Bill Maher, to mention one example, but they don’t have the horses.

As HE readers know, cancel culture deep-sixed my Sundance press pass late last year. I still covered Sundance ’19 by the good graces of my publicist pals, but it’s creepy nonetheless. I haven’t abused anyone — I’m just an opinionated bigmouth. Have I written five or six ill-advised or clumsily-phrased posts that I regret putting to pen? Yeah, but nothing I can’t mount a vigorous defense of if you wanna get into it. (Which I don’t at this point.) I’ve behaved like an asshole now and then, sure. The heaviest hits came from a couple of posts that surfaced a decade ago (partly due to an imbibing lifestyle I was leading at the time). I wish I could wipe it all away.

But these are zing blips on the screen compared to the torrents of material I’ve posted since the launch of HE in August ’04, not to mention the previous column material (Mr. Showbiz, Reel.com, Movie Poop Shoot) that I posted from ’98 to ’04. Not to mention my mainstream reportings in the bigtime ’90s and before.

Anyway, having actually felt the hot breath of the p.c. Stasi on the back of my neck, I damn near melted with love and gratitude when I read Sarah Silverman’s recent comments about cancel culture, as shared on an 8.8 Bill Simmons podcast.

Silverman: “I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then at 11 pm the night before they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode. I didn’t fight it. They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real, real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”

However, Silverman said, cancel culture, which she has called “righteousness porn,” is “really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it.

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You Still Haven’t Seen This? Seriously?

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Roger Durling to David Crosby (1:04): “Then why do [this documentary]? You have nothing to prove. You’re successful”. Crosby to Durling: “It’s kinda like, okay…you’re alone in the house. And you know that you’re gonna die. You’re gonna die. All of you. It’s not something we talk about. Everybody’s uncomfortable with it, but you’re gonna. … Read more

HE Approved

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.@JulianCastro bought ad space on FOX news to air this. WHAT KIND OF BOSS MOVE. pic.twitter.com/mPnYjTRiAs — chris evans (@notcapnamerica) August 13, 2019

Perfectly Cut, Timed, Phased

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Perhaps the most glorious aspect of Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life (Fox Searchlight, 12.13) is the truly wonderful eye-bath cinematography by Jörg Widmer, which more than lives up to Emmanuel Lubezski standards. The just-released trailer should be enough to convince even the most dire skeptic that the film is an absolute visual knockout. Congrats to … Read more