If I was walking down a street and I saw Jelly Roll coming my way, I would quickly cross to the other side. Obese, tattoo face, drug history…later.
“In a country riddled with crises — the opioid epidemic, mass incarceration, the mental health crisis and gun violence among them — Jelly Roll’s music is an expression not just of musical tastes, but also of a desperate national hunger for healing and recovery.” — from Crispin Sartwell‘s “Can Jelly Roll Heal the Broken Soul of America?,” posted in the N.Y Times on 7.23.
HE to Jamie Foxx: You’re mostly recovered & out of the woods…great. But what happened, bruh? Did you have the sniffles or a fever and then it got out of hand? Were you stabbed by your wife? Did you accidentally swallow a pellet of plutonium? Did gangbangers shoot you down in a hail of bullets?
Yesterday afternoon Jeff and Saha discussed the Barbenheimer Bait & Switch — the two films having been sold as one thing only to reveal their true colors during actual screenings.
Hey, maybe it’s me. I mean, maybe I’m a little fucked up or something. But yesterday’s HE comment thread consensus seems to be (a) yes, no film in Hollywood history has conveyed such a high degree of misandrist contempt for straight white dudes (men of color and mixed ethnicity being, of course, not only blameless but glorious), and yet (b) none of this matters because Barbie is a huge hit so all those grumpy misogynist dissers are the problem, not the film itself.
Do I have this right? Toxic gender-hate cinema is totally fine as long as it’s popular?
…that while Roland Joffe‘s Fat Man and Little Boy (’89) is a far lesser film than Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer in several ways, this Trinity explosion scene is decently shot…it looks and feels classically cinematic.
Except for two bonehead errors. One is the ridiculous notion of J. Robert Oppenheimer lighting a cigarette at the exact instant of detonation; second is an absurd suggestion that just as the golden explosion is seen and felt and heard, Oppie would behave like a euphoric Wolf of Wall Street broker who’s just closed a huge sale.
In my southern corner of the world, the audience did NOT vibe with #Barbie. It so clearly wasn’t what they were expecting. I liked it quite a bit, but it’s a bit of a bummer to sit through a funny, inventive film with a packed, dead audience who doesn’t laugh a single time. pic.twitter.com/wlTGpDMf09
“Barbie is like the deformed mutated rage child of Captain Marvel, the 2016 Ghostbusters and She-Hulk.
“Watching this film was one of the most miserable, demoralizing, unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had as a movie critic [as it] genuinely made me question where [western] society is heading.
“It is pure brain cancer in movie form, and I was genuinely shocked by the sheer, undisguised contempt that film has for 50% of the human population.
“Barbie real]y is a wolf in sheep’s clothing…a lot of parents who have been duped into taking their daughters to watch this, probably expecting the kind of breezy, colorful, family-friendly movie that was advertised, only to find themselves confronted with this spiteful, bitter, mean-spirited pile of misandrist dogshit instead…
“Think of the man-hating psychopaths who are going to be created because of this film.
“If you’re a parent and you’re thinking of taking your kids to see Barbie, the Drinker recommends that you skip this one and literally do anything else with them. Believe me — you’ll thank me later.”
“Undisciplined Barbie Gush“, posted on 7.20: “Never has a major studio film ever conveyed such utter contempt for straight guys…in its peppy and good natured way Barbieconstantly belittles men and regards them as delusional little boys with selfish and thoughtless agendas.
“Red-staters will have problems with the basic Barbie attitude. This movie definitely tries to nudge the little girls and boys that will see it into the man-hating, male-pitying side of the discussion.
“If you want to start your little girl (or your little boy) on a path to despising foolish and idiotic straight men, this is the film to take them to — trust me.
“In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way Greta Gerwig‘s movie absolutely DESPISES men. It really does — it’s total propaganda to this effect.”
As HE commenter Kristi Coulter noted a few hours ago, Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been, in fact, dishonestly sold and promoted. Because it’s basically a bait-and-switcher.
It’s not some kind of awesome, slam-bam-whammo atomic bomb film. It’s not a tale of acute scientific obsession or about a fine, fevered, steadily building madness. And it’s not a WWII horror film about the becoming of death and the destroying of worlds or even cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Instead it’s a dialogue-driven saga of a blindingly brilliant but conflicted and finally self-crippling Jewish physicist who oversaw and guided the building of the world’s first atomic bombs (FatMan and LittleBoy) but was mainly out to punish Nazi Germany…his European kin will have vengeance!
But when that quest ended and Japan became the target the physicist didn’t feel the fire as much, and then, in the wake of the deaths of tens of thousands, he turned into a “crybaby” (Harry Truman’s term) and a kind of squishy, under-motivated turncoat in the matter of the H-bomb’s development, and as a result he wound up being persecuted and devoured by Robert Downey, Jr. and the D.C. wolves in 1954 and thereby lost his “security clearance.”
That’s it — that’s what the movie is. The saga of a slender, pipe-smoking, genius-level candy-ass with cold blue eyes. A guy who built the bomb but didn’t want to know or even think about it after the task was completed. Treated unfairly and with cruelty, for sure, but who would argue he didn’t make his own bed?
And who believes that Cillian Murphy’s Oppie was able to feel sexual desire, or was even capable of attaining stiffie-hood? I didn’t buy it for a second, especially in the company of the stocky, short-statured, moon-faced and rather morose Florence Pugh.
On top of which my trapped legs were killing me in that third-row-center seat.
The Warning‘s Steve Schmidt has known Lindsey Graham, the shamelessly Trump-fellating Senator from South Carolina, personally for many years. Schmidt has been completely disgusted by Graham since he became a Trump toady seven years ago. He speaks here about Graham’s slimy, slithering behavior — almost entertaining from a certain perspective.
Yesterday afternoon (7.20) Variety‘s Matt Donnellyreported that under the cloud of a possibly enduring SAG/AFTRA strike, Warner Bros. is “strongly considering” bumping Dune: Part Two out of its 11.3.23 release date and opening it sometime in ’24.
The apparent concern is that Joe and Jane Popcorn will either be unaware of these films or wont be motivated to see them unless the actors promote them via the usual media outlets.
Forgive me for sounding ignorant or for living on my own cloud or desert island, but if I want to see a film it’s NEVER because this or that actor has visited the Jimmy Kimmel Show or done the usual round of junket interviews. It’s because of good reviews or advance screenings or general online buzz.
I realize there’s a whole community of none-too-brights out there who will never see a given film UNLESS the star has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel or done junket interviews, but it seems strange nonetheless.
Before last night’s AMC Lincoln Square Oppenheimer screening the Dune: Part Two trailer played on the big IMAX screen, and it was obvious that the crowd is excited about seeing it. Timothee Chalamet interviews won’t matter one way or the other.
An “industry player” has told Donnelly that the success of The Color Purple “would hinge on a robust awards campaign.” Those who want to see The Color Purple because of its own merits are already convinced, just as I’m convinced that The Color Purple will never ring my bell and that I would’t see it with a gun jammed against my rib cage,
I just don’t want to see Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Sony, 11.22) bumped into ’24…please.
