I received a little pushback about yesterday’sriff about Florida governor Ron DeSantis wearing those awful white rubber boots during a tour of the coastal Florida areas devastated by Hurricane Ian.
I was informed that DeSantis is wearing standard-issue shrimp boots, which are common apparel for fishermen on shrimp boats. Moisture protection, snake protection.
My reply is that it doesn’t matter how many Cajun shrimpers own a pair of those Nancy Sinatra go-go boots — they look ridiculous.
Any allegedly straight male who wears white go-go-boots on a shrimp boat automatically causes his alpha male credentials too be questioned. And it WAS DeSantis’s Michael Dukakis on a tank moment (aka “Rocky the squirrel”).
If DeSantis was a MAN, he would have worn these black boots. If I was a shrimper, these would be my jam.
Christian Bale has been exceptional or certainly admired in several roles over the last 30 years. His finest performances, HE feels, are, in this order, the following: Dicky Eklund in The Fighter (’10), Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (’00), Dick Cheney in Vice (’18), and Bruce Wayne in his three Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises).
But the Bale “performance” that made the strongest and most lasting impression, hands down, is “Bale Out: RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!“, which popped in early ’09. A satirical dance remix of Bale’s Terminator Salvation rant (which happened for real in July 2008), it’s absolutely real, brilliant and unforgettable in a relentless sort of way. Every angry word is 110% genuine.
This is a distasteful subject, but I'll just mention it and be done with it. I've ridden on underground subway systems all over the world -- Paris, Boston, Berlin, Prague, Washington, D.C., Barcelona, London, Zurich, Rome, Munich, Frankfurt, Firenze -- and New York's subway system is the only one that has a serious problem with homeless urine stink. Okay, I might have encountered one or two faint whiffs in the Paris metro, but it's not a regular thing there. You can, on the other hand, absolutely count on The Unpleasant while waiting for the IRT, IRT Lex, R or IND trains in Manhattan. Is it because homeless guys in Barcelona, London, Berlin and Prague are slightly more sanitary? Is alcoholism less of a problem over there? Do the overseas subway systems use more effective (i.e., more fragrant) disinfectant or employ more clean-up crews?
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Okay, there's a vague resemblance between Casper Phillipson, who plays JFK in Pablo Larrain's Jackie and Andrew Dominik's Blonde, and the Real McCoy. The nose, the jawline and the eyes, to some extent, but at the same time Phillipson's eyes lack something important. In his off moments JFK's eyes had a haunted, hangdog quality -- a slightly gloomy and exhausted look that was captured by Time magazine illustrator Pietro Annigoni. There was a vibe about Kennedy in these moments that seemed to say "I'm probably not going to last into old age, and you know it as well as I." No offense to Phillipson but this grave undertone vibe is missing in his features. Gotta have that flickering awareness of death hovering.
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Any guy knows that if you put on a pair of tallish rubber wading boots, the color has to be olive drab or dark blue. Or black-and-yellow fireman boots. But what kind of clueless dork puts on a pair of white go-go boots a la Nancy Sinatra? That's more than clueless -- it's borderline suicidal from an image standpoint. And worse when you throw in the pot belly. If I was DeSantis I would drop at least 15 or 20 pounds -- he's too chubby to be a Presidential candidate. And while I'm working on the gut I would wear a midriff girdle under my shirt. Orson Welles wore one while playing the fresh-out-of-college Charles Foster Kane.
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As you begin to watch Park Chan-wook‘s Decision to Leave (MUBI, 10.14), there’s no denying that you’re being carried along by a masterful visual composer. Every shot is exquisite, a painting, an eye bath…and so perfectly balanced.
And during the first 30 to 40 minutes you can’t help saying to yourself “wow, this guy is really good” while at the same time hoping that it’ll amount to more than just a delicious film noir by way of a haunting mood trip.
And of course it doesn’t. As the first hour comes to an end it begins to hit you. This film is all visual swoon and superficial noir strokes, you realize — it’s not going to build or pivot or dovetail into anything. But it’ll look great every step of the way.
And then you look at your watch and go “oh Jesus Mary mother of God, there’s another 70 or 80 minutes to go!” And you realize that you’re stuck, and you descend into a feeling of being locked in an animal cage filled with straw. And you realize, of course, that the minutes are just going to drag on and on. You’d like to leave but you can’t because you’re watching a film by the great Park Chan-wook, and only a rank philistine would do such a thing.
I’m just saying that Decision to Leave is opening on a week from Friday, and that…oh, hell, do what you want. Some critics are nuts for this guy. But this film should ideally be called Decision to Avoid.
Posted from Cannes on 5.23: With all due respect for Park Chan-wook’s smoothly masterful filmmaking chops (no one has ever disputed this) and the unbridled passion that his cultish film critic fans have expressed time and again…
And with respect, also, for the time-worn film noir convention of the smart but doomed male protagonist (a big city homicide detective in this instance) falling head over heels for a Jane Greer-like femme fatale and a psychopathic wrong one from the get-go…
The labrynthian (read: convoluted) plotting of Park’s Decision To Leave, though initially intriguing, gradually swirls around the average-guy viewer (read: me) and instills a feeling of soporific resignation and “will Park just wrap this thing up and end it already?”
Jesus God in heaven, but what doth it profit an audience to endure this slow-drip, Gordian knot-like love story-slash-investigative puzzler (emphasis on the p word) if all that’s left at the end is “gee, what an expert directing display by an acknowledged grade-A filmmaker!”
“Paris, October 4h, 2022 — Microids is pleased to announce Pendulo Studios’ latest narrative adventure game, Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo, which is now available on PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox One consoles, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. It will launch on October 4th in North America.
“Loosely based on the famous director’s movie of the same name, Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo is a narrative experience, also available on PC (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store).
“Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo tells the story of Ed Miller, a writer who escaped unscathed from a car crash in Brody Canyon, California. Ed insists that he was traveling with his wife and daughter, though nobody was found in the car wreckage. Traumatized by the crash, Ed begins to suffer from severe vertigo. As he starts therapy, Ed will try to uncover the truth behind what really happened on that tragic day.”
And I certainly admired and respected the Real McCoy — a country music legend, a contemporary of Elvis and Jerry Lee, not much younger than Hank Williams. And I understand the basic thing about country singers being conservative. But her musical gifts aside, I always felt a certain distance from Loretta Lynn. She was a Nixon fan in the early ’70s and a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy in ’16. But Sissy Spacek‘s performance melted my heart, and it obviously came straight from Lynn’s life so I guess I should respect that. Hard to believe Coal Miner’s Daughteropened 42 years ago. Tommy Lee Jones‘ “Doo” was one of his finest.
...feels a little off here and there. I'm at a disadvantage as I haven't yet seen Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (Universal, 11.11), which Feinberg and a few others are calling the Best Picture front-runner, and I haven't seen Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin (Searchlight, 10.21) either. And we all understand that things are always a little bit vague at this point and that Feinberg will sometimes err on the side of generosity around this time, etc. But I can at least insert my own spitball projections and hold my finger to the wind, etc. Boldfaced italics indicate serious HE faith.
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