Lady Gaga, an X-factor art God and super-celeb by any yardstick, presumably has the pick of the litter when it comes to boyfriends, and yet for the last four years she’s been with swarthy, barrel-chested rich dude and Sean Parker bro Michael Polansky. And now she’s engaged to the guy.

This is the best she can do? Look at that L.L. Bean shirt-and-jacket combo he’s wearing — he looks like an unshaven, beer-bellied New Jersey dad hanging out in a hardware store or some guy coaching a high-school football team or, like, the co-owner of a Cranford, New Jersey bowling alley.

HE to Polansky: If you hook up with an ultra-glammy musician you’re expected to “get with the program” to some extent…to at least half-adopt her style and embrace her aesthetic attitude and, you know, join the cool kidz team.

I’m sorry but Polansky’s chowderhead beefalo Mall of America outfit obviously doesn’t make it.

From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review of Joker: Folie a Deux, which appeared just after 1 pm eastern today:

“I should mention that not enough happens in Folie a Deux. The movie is two hours and 18 minutes long, and here’s the entire plot:

“Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) is wasting away in Arkham State Hospital. He meets Lee (Lady Gaga), who devotes herself to him. He goes on trial, and the is-he-a-dual-personality-or-just-a-criminal debate unfolds. A verdict is reached. A fateful bomb explodes. The end.

“As a critic, I’ve experienced my share of debates, but I have never understood the morally judgmental quality that hung over the criticisms of Joker. That the film invited us to have a deep identification with a twisted sociopath wasn’t, in my book, a weakness; it was a strength. The movie was, among other things, an allegory of the Trump era, but it’s almost as if the critics were saying, ‘We don’t like the movie because Arthur is a nasty incel who leads an uprising just like Trump!’

“To me, the criticisms of Joker were sort of comparable to a studio executive giving notes that basically said, ‘Raging Bull‘s Jake LaMotta isn’t likable enough.’

“Did the critics, with Joker, turn into cautious executive scolds? In my opinion, they did. But the upshot is that Todd Phillips, making what I think is a huge mistake, listened to them.

“Joker: Folie à Deux may be ambitious and superficially outrageous, but at heart it’s an overly cautious sequel. Phillips has made a movie in which Arthur really is just poor Arthur; he does nothing wrong and isn’t going to threaten anyone’s moral sensibilities. In fact, he actually blows the only good thing that ever happened to him — winning the love of Lee’s Harley Quinn — because he denies the Joker in himself. He’s now just a singing-and-dancing puppet clown living in his imagination.

“Is that entertainment? Audiences, I suspect, will still turn out in droves to see Folie à Deux. But when it comes to bold mainstream filmmaking, it’s the scolds who are having the last laugh.”

Consider Paola Camacho‘s 9.4.24 Venice Film Festival review of Todd Phillips‘ Joker: Folie a Deux (Warner Bros., 10.4), pasted below.

Pay particular attention to (a) her passage about the power dynamic behind Joaquin Phoenix‘s Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn having been “switched completely in a way we’ve never seen,” not to mention (b) Paola’s statement that “for lack of a better phrase, the Arthur / Joker character [in this film] is pussy-whipped.”

Paola #2: “Anyone who loved the first Joker will hate this one, and anyone who was critical of the first one will love this one. I, for one, love both. They are two entirey different [films].”

Paola #3: “The hard stans will inevitably tear this film apart” because it doesn’t do that ecoectrd Arthur/Joker incel-madman thing.

Here’s her entire review:

Within the past 24 hours Variety’s Clayton Davis, the well-known, DEI-brand columnist who’s always keeping close tabs…a day ago Clayton wrote (and then tweeted) that the three biggest Oscar contenders to ignite at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival were (1) Sean Baker’s Anora (true), (2) Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez (also true) and (3) Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night (probably not outside of the writing, Best Supporting Actress and production design categories).

The forehead-slapper isn’t what Clayton chose but what he omitted —- Edward Berger’s Conclave, easily the most highly favored 2024 Best Picture Oscar contender as we speak…no question, hands down.

And yet Clayton declined to mention it in his Telluride triumvirate piece. I know that ignoring Conclave at this stage of the game is total wackadoo. There must be a Clayton reason that makes sense. Some slight or resentment, some political consideration.

I suspect it’s not the “too many white guys” complaint because Lucian Msamati, a British-Tanzanian actor of color, plays a senior supporting character, Cardinal Adeyemi, plus there’s a very woke-friendly plot revelation that puts a certain kick into the narrative.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s Venice Film Festival review of Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer:

“Daniel Craig, shifting about a dozen gears from James Bond, doesn’t make the mistake of impersonating the older William Burroughs who became a punk icon in the ’80s: the dry voice, the beady-eyed stare of hostility. Craig gives us a pinch of that glowering Burroughs DNA, but the trick of his performance, which is bold and funny and alive, is that he’s playing the younger Burroughs (at the time, the author was around 40), before he’d passed through the looking glass of cultivated insanity to write his visionary novel of American chaos, ‘Naked Lunch.’

“This is Burroughs before he got famous, when he was just…a man, pursuing what his instincts told him to. Craig makes him a nasty, witty literary dog laced with vulnerability. Pounding back shots of tequila, spitting out winding assertions like ‘Your generation has never learned the pleasures that a tutored palate confers on a magnificent few,’ he’s a troublemaker, an abrasive soul. But he is also, deep in that bitter heart of his, a romantic. He tries to maintain power in every situation, but as soon as he meets Eugene, we see that the desire for love has supreme power over him.”

When I began driving north from Albuquerque last Wednesday afternoon, the left-front tire on my Alamo rental car (a black Hyundai Elantra) had a weak tire pressure reading. I was pressed for time so I just drove on. But on my journey back to Albuquerque, which began yesterday in the mid afternoon, the tire pressure was down to 19. And then 15 and 14, and then 10 and 9. I stopped twice to inject compressed air (in the Colorado towns of Rico and Dolores) but the pressure stayed low.

I called an Alamo rep to report the problem. She suggested that I drive to Durango La Plata airport and exchange my Elantra for another car. There was one chubby 20something woman manning the desk for not just Alamo but also National and Enterprise, and after serving several just-arrived customers for an hour she told me there were no available cars to exchange.

By the time I arrived in Farmington the tire pressure was near zero. Call it flat. It took several infuriating, late-night calls with a variety of undereducated Alamo 20somethings with a minimal command of English to finally arrange for a tow-truck guy to drop by the Journey Inn motel and change the tire. (It didn’t happen until this morning.) Except they wanted me to pay $75 for the service.

HE: “It’s your car and your flat tire, and you want me to pay the local tow-truck guy?”

The guy removed the empty tire and replaced it with one of those baby tires…fine. Except the baby tire has a glued-on warning that says in bold letters that I shouldn’t drive faster than 50 mph or 80 kph.

HE to tow-truck guy: “So I can’t drive to Albuquerque with this thing?” Tow-truck guy: “I wouldn’t.”

I guess the only responsible thing is to buy a decent tire somewhere in Farmington and have it put on and then work out the expenses with Alamo back at Albuquerque Sunport. But before I do this I want assurances from the Alamo guys that they’ll deduct this cost from my six-day rental fee of $377. Excerpt I’ve called them five times this morning and they won’t pick up, and I can’t leave a voicemail message.

I also hated the way the out-sourced Alamo reps asked me if I’m calling “from a safe location.” One of them actually asked me if I was “feeling safe” at the end of one of the calls. This is a Millennial thing…”are you feeling safe, oh my little squishy weenies?”

HE to Alamo Millennials: “Nobody wants to feel threatened or uncertain or insecure…nobody wants to be Janet Leigh in that motel room scene in Touch of Evil…but my feelings of safety and assurance have nothing to do with you or your level of barely-there, nodding-out service.”

Culturally speaking, New Mexico is not what most of us would call a vibrant, aspirational society. It certainly doesn’t feel that way.

Like most places New Mexico is seemingly well developed. It has its rich, elite communities and the exuding of at least a semblance of educated awareness, but generally speaking I’m not feeling much in the way of upscale vibes. I’m sensing a certain current of grunty lowlife attitude…a feeling of resignation.

I’ve been staying at a downmarket motel in Farmington (about three hours north of Albuquerque) and watched a couple of anti-Kamala Harris ads last night…vicious stuff.

Emerson has Harris polling at 52% vs. Trump’s 42%. All I’m saying is that I can really feel the bumblefuck vibe in this corner of the state.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the mysterious black monolith that suddenly appears before the tribe of lesser “Dawn of Man” apes (i.e., the ones who lost access to the water pond because a tribe of tougher, snarlier apes kicked them out)…the monolith is a cosmic blessing, a civilization-saver…a bringer of deliverance, transcendence, possibility.

Now hear this: the monolith is basically conducting a massive scientific experiment by attempting to spawn intelligence on our planet…it’s a bringer of intelligent initiative and awareness and technological potential…an explorational sentinel sent by aliens of incalculable intelligence, the purpose being to trigger and awaken the lesser apes to evolutionary advancement and put them on the road to eventually becoming intelligent human beings.

In the 21st Century present, the very same monolith (or a close cousin of the one that fiddled with the apes) has been found buried under the surface of the moon. Once sunlight hits it, a piercing radio signal is generated…a signal aimed at the hugely insubstantial gas planet of Jupiter, easily one of the most disappointing planets in our solar system.

Light hitting the no-longer-buried monolith informs the super-intelligent aliens that humans have advanced to a certain noteworthy point in their evolution.

All the HAL vs. Dave and Frank stuff aboard the Discovery is the only plotty part of the film, and was basically generated by Stanley-the-misanthrope…all about how artificial intelligence is just as capable of hubris and ruthlessness and self-destruction as the humans who created it.

The finale is wonderful, of course, and the basic thing that Keir Dullea‘s Dave Bowman seems to know deep down is that the glorious monolith represents damn near everything…it’s the fountain of eternity and the central engine of life…continuity, God, essence, worship, wonder and infinite expansion.

Luca Guadagnino during Venice Film Festival Queer press conference: “Guys, let’s be adults in the room for a second. There is no way around the fact that nobody would ever know [what] James Bond desires.”

This morning I decided to sample a few drops of CDB Oil, which affects the system in a way that facilitates or complements the strawberry red gummies. Neither the oil or the gummies are about delivering any kind of pot high, although they have a slight trace of THC in them.

About 40 minutes after I deposited several drops of oil (maybe nine or ten) under my tongue, and while idly chatting with Sasha Stone in the condo, I began to feel a wee bit ignited. There was a slight tingle in my system. Like I’d just had a couple of pulls on a joint.

My head was gently levitating with the dry mouth and all. I couldn’t even swallow. My mind was running and skipping all around and burrowing down under and juggling three or four thoughts, shifting and pivoting, idea sparks, etc.

My cautious-minded conservative self, the person who lives somewhat anxiously within and is always first to ring the alarm bell…he spoke up quickly and said “uhhm, don’t freak out but I think we’re kind of stoned…just be aware of this.”

I haven’t been high since Tatiana persuaded me to pop a pot-high gummie three or four years ago. But here I am…vaguely ripped with all kinds of crackling thoughts and intuitions popping..

I knew I shouldn’t drive as I might suddenly notice psychedelic grasshopper trucks driving next to me on the way back to Albuquerque.

So I walked into town to tell the Green Dragon counter guys that the oil drops, if you take eight or ten of them, can make you feel like you’re almost tripping, and that they should post a warning on the label to this effect

I then walked down to the Abel Gance outdoor theatre, and decided to sit at a nearby outdoor dining table. I was still too stoned to drive so I bought a Diet Coke at Steamies, parked it outdoors and began reading and texting in front of a large brick commercial building…a non-historic, vaguely ugly building that has a few rentable condos on the second, third and fourth floors.

I was just minding my own, texting and reading and occasionally glancing at the passers-by, when all of a sudden THR’s Rebecca Keegan was strolling out of the brick building. Ding–ding–ding–ding–ding!

My first, fleeting, semi-paranoid, pot-buzz reaction was, “Holy shit, it’s Keegan! If she spots me she’s gonna think I’m stalking her or something. And if she stares at me she might sense that I’m stoned and conclude that I’m more than a bit unstable. She’s very touchy so who knows? Maybe she hasn’t seen me…please, God.”

I mean, Keegan is apparently on-board with a THR consensus that I was “menacing” her in an 8.21 post in which I said I might give her a dirty look, etc. These people are very hair-trigger when it comes to expressing concerns about “safety” and whatnot.

So if any THR people are reading this, please tell Keegan I had no idea she was staying in the large brick building and that our suddenly being 15 feet apart as she walked out and went on her way… that was a total, no–big–deal coincidence. Really. I took no photos, pretended not to be there, etc. Total nothingburger.

The Hollyweed Elsewhere art is by Tex Hayward…thanks

Since arriving in the thin-air Rockies I’ve been grappling with stabbing pain in my swollen right knee and gnawing pain in my left thigh. It hurts to walk anywhere, and walking around the Telluride Film Festival like Joe Biden feels profoundly humiliating, let me tell ya.

A day or two ago I was half-hobbling toward Telluride’s Palm theatre, and a pair of Type-A women with badges passed on my left. One of them turned and glanced at me and eyeballed my badge. She wanted to know who the gimp was.

I’ve had strong legs all my life, and while I’m fairly certain this current malady isn’t permanent, the idea of resembling a member of the shuffleboard set from an assisted living facility is shattering. It certainly delivers a blow to my own self-image.

I was honestly saying to myself yesterday that I should have brought my shiny black cane with me. (I bought it during my mid-teen bout with plantar fascitis.)

I’ll say it again — walking around like Biden is hugely depressing. I have my CBD gummies, my Advil tablets, my muscle-massage gun and my Nordic Goddess body balm, and nothing really seems to help. Okay, the gummies have modified the pain somewhat but the shooting knee ache has nearly brought me to tears.

Last night I was about to leave for a 9:30 pm Galaxy screening of Pablo Larrain‘s Maria — roughly a 10-minute uphill walk — and I was so intimidated and gloomed-out by the idea of each right-leg step delivering a twitch of pain…I was so bummed that something collapsed inside, and I decided to just crash on the couch. I slept until 4:30 am.

I’m hoping that an injection or two of cortisone when I get back home might make the knee pain subside. Thank God my life activities mostly revolve around sitting — writing, watching films, driving — but the idea of being less inclined to walk here or there because of acute discomfort…that’s the end, man. “When your legs go, so do your professional opportunities” — William Wyler.

Sasha tells me my leg troubles will be alleviated if I start wearing therapeutic ugly shoes. Sasha knows I’d rather die than wear ugly shoes so I don’t know why she mentioned it.