@hypebae @Sam Smith just walked the @Vivienne Westwood FW24 show. #tiktokfashion #parisfashionweek #samsmith #viviennewestwood ♬ original sound – HYPEBAE

…should be interesting, as I intend to prompt a discussion of (a) Dune: Part Two, (b) Sam Mendes‘ four-film Beatles project and (c) the last and final HE Oscar predictions, which are the same predictions that everyone else is making or standing by. Plus whatever else comes to mind.

But I laughed harder at this photo that at anything else I saw, heard or thought about today. I’m sorry but it’s funny. The slight hint of Shatner’s spray-tanned stomach flab, the tin-foil brassiere, the look of faint exasperation on the actress’s face…all of it plus the baked potato association. Perfect.

In my two-day-old review (2.29) of Dune: Part Two, I wrote the following: “If you can put aside the Frank Herbert story and just tune in to the other-worldliness, it’s quite a feast for the eyes — a major league art film. Stunningly exotic and quite original…quite the aural-visual knockout.”

Friend to HE: “Yes, but how can you put aside the Frank Herbert story? The car-wreck horror of Herbert’s storytelling is front and center. He’s the worst storyteller in the history of the planet. Dune: Part Two actually makes J.R.R. Tolkien seem interesting. I wouldn’t say that the movie has a bad script. I would say that it doesn’t have a script.

“I dug all the visual stuff you were talking about — the sandy colors, the moody grandeur of the fascist imagery. I’m not immune to that sort of visual-atmospheric pizzaz.

“But I still wanted to shoot myself. The film felt nine hours long to me. If you told me I have watch Dune: Part Two again, I would jump off a bridge instead.

“Some of the violence was good, and I really liked Austin Butler psycho baldie. But I did not think this was a good Chalamet performance. During the last act when he started shouting and asserting dominance, he started to remind me of Nicolas Cage.

“I’m just shocked that you got swept up in it…”

HE to Friendo: “I did so by deliberately ignoring the story particulars and large portions of the script. I was only interested in the acting and the design and atmosphere and cinematography and editing. I was totally bored by all that Fremen vs. Harkonnen bullshit. I could sense early on that I would soon feel tortured if I tried to follow the story. I decided instead to just turn on the phone and read the synopsis on Wikipedia.

“I didn’t care about the story, but I liked everything else about the film. It looks and feels really cool and exotic and unlike anything I’ve seen in this kind of dense fantasy realm…it’s a world unto itself, and the creation of it all is truly fascinating.”

Friendo to HE: “To me that’s like saying you liked everything about a restaurant — the look, the vibe, the service — except for the food.”

HE to Friendo: “I’ve never felt that a script is the primary supplier of the ‘food’ in a film. A script is obviously necessary in terms of exposition and expressing themes and providing basic story structure, but as Stanley Kubrick famously said, the payoff we get from most films is more from the emotional mood supply. The hook of a good film isn’t so much from the think of it but the feel of it.

“That said, I’ve actually felt this way about some restaurants. I’ve adored the lighting, the decor and design, the cultured vibe, the tablecloth and lighted candles, the conversation with the person or persons I’m eating with, the excellent service, the upscale bathrooms, etc. Sometimes the food is phenomenal and sometimes it’s just okay. But regardless of how good the food is, I tend to value the other things as much as the food and sometimes more than.

“There’s a restaurant in Paris that I’ve been to six or seven times, called Le Coupe Chou. When you walk downstairs to use the facilities there’s a door that leads to some kind of sub-cellar or subterranean tunnel that leads God-knows-where, and the rank aroma from inside that tunnel is astounding…it smells like Paris from the 15th or 16th Century, and you can’t sample that kind of aroma anywhere in North America, I swear…it’s strictly an ancient European city smell. This in itself sold me on Le Coupe Chou, regardless of how good the food is.”

In a week-old essay, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman expressed a profound lack of faith in Sam Mendes’ ability to make a satisfying quartet of Beatles movies, one about each of the Fab Four, using the individual perspectives of John, Paul, George and Ringo.

My initial reaction (posted on 2.28.24) was that “nobody and I mean nobody can ‘play’ Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr. No matter who Mendes chooses to hire, it simply won’t work. Their faces and voices are too deeply embedded in every corner of our minds to convincingly replicate or even half-replicate in a narrative format.”

I’m nonetheless intrigued by the ambition behind the Mendes-Beatles project, particularly the idea of releasing all four films in tandem in 2027. You can’t accuse Mendes and Sony chief Tom Rothman of undue caution or timidity.

The Gleiberman piece triggered me, however, when he said he got “swept up” by Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor Johnson‘s 2009 biopic of the teenaged John Lennon. Dear God in heaven!

I was actually too generous in calling it “a marginally effective, vaguely muffled chick-flick account of Lennon’s teenage years in Liverpool, circa 1956 to ’60.

“I’m not calling it dull, exactly, but Nowhere Boy‘s somewhat feminized, all-he-needs-is-love story just didn’t turn me on.

“Matt Greenhalgh‘s script is based on a memoir called ‘Imagine This‘ by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird.

“I understand that this love and rejection were key issues in Lennon’s youth, but the film didn’t sell me on this. It seemed to be frittering away its time by focusing on it. Lennon’s anguish was primal enough (‘Mother, you had me but I never had you’) but my reaction all through it was, ‘Okay, but can we get to the musical stuff, please?’

“Nowhere Boy boasts a relatively decent lead performance by Aaron Johnson. He doesn’t overdo the mimicry and keeps his Liverpudlian accent in check. And yet it’s a somewhat overly sensitive, touchy-feely rendering of a rock ‘n’ roll legend who was known, after all, for his nervy, impudent and sometimes caustic manner, at least in his early incarnations.

“I didn’t believe the hurting look in Johnson’s eyes. All those looking-for-love feelings he shows are too much about ‘acting,’ and hurt-puppy-dog expressions don’t blend with the legend of the young Lennon (as passed along by biographies, articles, A Hard Day’s Night etc.) Emotionally troubled young guys tend to get crusty and defensive when there’s hurt inside, and this was certainly Lennon’s deal early on.

“And Johnson is needlessly compromised, I feel, by a curious decision on Taylor-Wood’s part to create her own, reality-defying physical version of Lennon. She ignores the fact that he had light brown, honey-colored hair by allowing Johnson to keep his own dark-brown, nearly-jet-black hair. Nor did she have Johnson wear a prosthetic nose — one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book — in order to replicate Lennon’s distinctive English honker. Where would the harm have been if they’d tried to make Johnson look more like the real McCoy?”

HE commenter #1: “This portrait of Lennon seems to be far too cuddly to be credible. From what I’ve read, he had a mile-wide cruel streak, was more than a bit of a brawler and, if Albert Goldman is to be believed, almost beat another man to death for making a pass at him.

HE commenter #2: “Actually I think the movie makes Lennon look like the world’s biggest twat. Which he may have been, but when you remove all the context of who he becomes, then it’s just an annoying, unpleasant watch. There’s very few redeeming qualities about this film, and Johnson’s noxious portrayal didn’t help things.”

In HE’s judgment, 25 exceptional, high-quality films were released in 1959. (There were another 9 or 10 that were good, decent, not bad.) By today’s standards, here’s how the top 25 rank:

1. Billy Wlder‘s Some Like It Hot (released on 3.29.59)

2. Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (released on 7.1.59)

3. John Ford‘s The Horse Soldiers (released on 6.12.59)

4. George Stevens‘ The Diary of Anne Frank (released 3.18.59)

5. Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (released on 12.17.59)

6. William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur (released on 11.18.59)

7. Alain Resnais‘s Hiroshima, Mon Amour (released in France on 6.10.59)

8. Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (released on 5.29.59)

9. Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (released on 7.2.59)

10. Francois Truffaut‘s The 400 Blows (released in France on 5.4.59)

11. Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (released on 4.4.59)

12. Sidney Lumet‘s The Fugitive Kind (released on 4.14.59)

13. Tony Richardson‘s Look Back in Anger (released on 9.15.59)

14. Grigory Chukhray‘s Ballad of a Soldier (released on 12.1.59)

15. Robert Bresson‘s Pickpocket (released on 12.16.59)

16. Robert Wise‘s Odds Against Tomorrow (released on 10.15.59)

17. Delbert Mann‘s Middle of the Night (released on 6.17.59)

18. Robert Stevenson‘s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (released on 6.26.59)

19. Fred Zinnemann‘s The Nun’s Story (released on 6.18.59)

20. Guy Hamilton‘s The Devil’s Disciple (released on 8.20.59)

21. Roger Vadim‘s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (released on 9.9.59)

22. Richard Fleischer‘s Compulsion (released on 4.1.59)

23. Val Guest‘s Expresso Bongo (released on 12.11.59)

24. Carol Reed‘s Our Man in Havana (released in England on 12.30.59 / stateside on 1.27.60)

25. J. Lee Thompson‘s Tiger Bay (released in March 1959)

Bonus:

Charles Barton‘s The Shaggy Dog (released on 3.19.59).

Jordan Ruimy: “Dune: Part Two is actually night and day compared to the 2021 Dune. I loved it. Dune 3, however, is actually going to be very different. Chalamet is going to be a dictator.”

HE: “I don’t want to see that film. Last night’s viewing was an eye-opener….transporting visual material delivered with profound stylistic pizazz. I don’t want to descend into a dictatorship.”

Ruimy: “It’s a very different book. More solemn, less action.”

HE: “I’m not saying the first Dune (’21) was Star Wars — it certainly wasn’t — but Dune: Part Two is analogous to The Empire Strikes Back. It was a similar kind of exciting, darkly-shaded, going-deeper quality.”

Ruimy: “It truly is.”

Yeah, I know — I should wait until next year (mid July of ’25) to do a “looking back at my beloved decade-old Trainwreck” piece.

Judd Apatow‘s film premiered big-time at South by Southwest on 3.15.15 (just shy of nine years ago) and opened commercially on 7.17.15.

But in my mind Trainwreck is actually ten years old now, as it was in pre-production in the late winter and spring of ’14, and began principal photography on 5.19.14 in New York City. So let’s celebrate the 10-year anniversary today…pull up a chair.

A good comedy is just as story-savvy, character-rich and well-motivated as a good drama. Good comedies and dramas both need strong third-act payoffs. Take away the jokes, the broad business and the giggly schtick, and a successful comedy will still hold water in dramatic terms.

And yet most comedic writers, it seems, start with an amusing premise, then add the laugh material, and then, almost as an afterthought, weave in a semblance of a story along with some motivation and a third-act crescendo that feels a little half-assed.

Remember Amy Schumer‘s eulogy at her dad’s funeral in Trainwreck? That was a great scene, and it was part of an excellent comedy.

Posted on 6.30.15: Trainwreck is dryly hilarious and smoothly brilliant and damn near perfect. It’s the finest, funniest, most confident, emotionally open-hearted and skillful film Apatow has ever made, hands down. I was feeling the chills plus a wonderful sense of comfort and assurance less than five minutes in. Wow, this is good…no, it’s better…God, what a relief…no moaning or leaning forward or covering my face with my hands…pleasure cruise.

I went to the Arclight hoping and praying that Trainwreck would at least be good enough so I could write “hey, Schumer’s not bad and the film is relatively decent.” Well, it’s much better than that, and Schumer’s performance is not only a revelation but an instant, locked-in Best Actress contender. I’m dead serious, and if the other know-it-alls don’t wake up to this they’re going to be strenuously argued with. Don’t even start in with the tiresome refrain of “oh, comedic performances never merit award-season attention.” Shut up. Great performances demand respect, applause and serious salutes…period.

I still think Schumer is a 7.5 or an 8 but it doesn’t matter because (and I know how ludicrous this is going to sound given my history) I fell in love in a sense — I saw past or through all that and the crap that’s still floating around even now. For it became more and more clear as I watched that Schumer’s personality and performance constitute a kind of cultural breakthrough — no actress has ever delivered this kind of attitude and energy before in a well-written, emotionally affecting comedy, and I really don’t see how anyone can argue that Schumer isn’t in the derby at this point. (A columnist friend doesn’t agree but said that Schumer’s Trainwreck screenplay is a surefire contender for Best Original Screenplay.)

Re-submitting to the epic, sand-choked saga of Dune: Part Two didn’t thrill me in a narrative sense, but to my great surprise I adored watching Denis Villeneuve’s 168–minute, richly immersive, alternate–reality dream trip from a purely visual perspective.

Greig Fraser’s desaturated color (and briefly monochromatic) cinematography, Brad Riker’s art direction, Patrice Vermette’s production design and Joe Walker’s editing…Villeneuve’s visionary, deep-dive scheme provides the maestro-like guidance…conducting these four fellows…this is where the genius comes from, where it lies.

Dune: Part Two is a serious trip, an exotic world unto itself…one of the most eye-opening, original-feeling geek films I’ve ever seen.

If you can put aside the Frank Herbert story and just tune in to the other-worldliness, it’s quite a feast for the eyes — a major league art film. Stunningly exotic and quite original…quite the aural-visual knockout.

Rags and monster worms and pyramids and sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand. Mr. Sandman, man. Everyone and everything coated and smothered in trillions upon trillions of sparkling micro-crystals. Endless sand dune vistas…sand in my pores, in my ears and eyebrows…sand crystals in my pants, my mouth, my hair, my lungs…surrounded, enveloped…I couldn’t fucking breathe but in a different way Villeneuve opened me up.

Who the fuck cares about any of this? Forget the convoluted, forehead-slapping plot about dynasties and corruptions and revolutionary fervor and the arc of the chosen…just forget it, bruh. If you try to follow the labrynthian twists and turns you’ll be driven insane…bats in your belfry.

Just turn on the fucking phone and follow Herbert’s plot on the film’s Wikipedia page (which is what I did, starting around the one-half mark) and focus on the commanding, mind-bending, majesterial all of it…the dizzy, dancing way it looks, feels, sounds…the desaturated palette…the Fremen language rendered in subtitles. Scene after scene…some other planet…wowser exotica. I felt as if I had mescaline in my system. I forgot about the popcorn.

But at the same time I felt swamped and surrounded by the superhero, epic-saga cliches. So you know what I did? I said to myself “fuck all this…just concentrate on the textures, the brushstrokes…the wondrous style of it.”

The surprising aspect (at least from my perspective) is that Dune, Part Two truly abounds with excellent performances from everyone…Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya (as the messianic Paul Atreides and the pretty, half-feral Chani) deliver their career-best. Really — babygirl Timothee has turned into a man. And I never thought Zendaya’s acting was especially good. Now I feel differently.

Cue-ball bald, albino, eyebrow-less Austin Butler (as the totally psychotic Feyd–Rautha Harkonnen) has saved himself from the Curse of Elvis. He’s also saved himself from that awful ’60s motorcycle movie, The Bikeriders.

Not to mention the devotional Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. The demented, royal-robed Chris Walken. The bald, white-skinned, animal-eyed beast (Glossu-Rabban Harkonnen) played by Dave Bautista. All of the spacey and spooky women in robes and veils (Rebecca Ferguson, Lea Seydoux, Florence Pugh, Charlotte Rampling, Anya-Taylor Joy). And that bald, massively obese, sprawling mountain of sickening flesh in a dark pullover tunic (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), played by Stellan “fat as a cow” Skarsgard…what a complete, Trump-like animal.

I really wanted to hate Dune: Part Two, but I couldn’t. It wouldn’t let me. Hats off to the team.

Just remember to bring your phone and read the plot as you go along.

Eeeyaagghhh!!! Nightmares, convulsions, tears of rage. howls and jowls. My back is arched…hissss!!

I can’t wait for these fucking guys to fail. You know what would be absolutely dead perfect? If the Daniels give a lead role in this new film to the manatee-like Lily Gladstone…please do this!

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is conducting a poll of smartypants film journo and industry types, and the specific question is “send me your top five films of the 1950s unranked.”

Only five films from an entire decade? Not even ten…just five?

HE’s Top Five of the ’50s: (1) Fred Zinnemann‘s From Here To Eternity (’53); (2) Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg‘s On The Waterfront (’54); (3) Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52); (4) Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (’55); and (5) William Wyler‘s The Big Country (’58).

It strikes me as astonishing that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and subordinate co-prosecutor Nathan Wade are still being grilled as to when their affair began and whether or not they’ve told the full truth about when and where their sexual activity took place, etc.

I’ve acknowledged time and again that most of us are infuriated that Willis and Wade played their private cards this foolishly, thoughtlessly and arrogantly, and in so doing created absurdly embarassing optics for the prosecution, but why is this idiotic sideshow still the stuff of headlines?

If Willis and Wade wind up being taken off the case and replaced by substitute prosecutors, fine…but what’s happened to the main order of business?

Why are Willis and Wade apparently having fudged some of the apparent facts about their affair (which may have begun earlier than claimed and which ended late last summer)…why is this the big focus and not what any fair-minded observer would call the main order of criminal business?

Who has ever told the whole truth and nothing but the truth about past sexual indiscretions? Who cares who paid for this or that, or whether or not Willis settled shared expenses with cash or if Wade covered most of the costs?

What has happened, in short, to the prosecution of Trump and his stinking, crooked-ass cronies? Trump clearly attempted to influence Georgia election officials — including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via that famously recorded phone call — to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Willis’s office indicted Trump and 18 others on 41 charges on 8.14.23.

That’s criminal behavior, indictable fraud, racketeering, fast and loose stuff, fake electors, slippery bad guy moves. And all anyone wants to talk about is the schtupping between Willis and Wade. Hasn’t this crap gone on long enough?