This is it, a document that contains smoking-gun proof that Attorney General Merrick Garland is committed first and foremost to politicalcaution and squeamishness when it comes to the absolute necessity of prosecuting the only U.S. President in history to ignite mob rebellion against this country’s Constitutional system of transfer of Presidential power and scheme to overturn a legit election through manipulation and skullduggery. Donald Trump is an animal and a sociopath, and if the U.S. Justice Dept. doesn’t stand up and prosecute his loathsome ass then we are no longer a law-abiding Democracy and the concept of equal justice under law is meaningless — it’s that simple.
…and the whole jerkwater girly-glam, gender-fluid fashion thing that he’s been statement-izing for a year or two…I guess I was interpreting this as a detour or phase of some kind…an exhibition thing that he wanted to embrace and which would run its course and then ontothenextthing…but Styles and others seem to be settling into this anti-straight, anti-traditional-dude, embrace-the-pink-and-the-frilly fashion attitude, and I for one am feeling a bit irked and even (do I dare say this?) angry. I’m sick of his wearing pearl necklaces and transparent black-net sleeves and I don’t care if I sound harumphy. Harry Styles can honestly go fuck himself, and this, to me, has nothing to do with sexuality or gender issues. It has to do with simply being sick ofthisshit…okay?
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Variety’s Gene Maddaus has posted a 7.18.22article that summarizes recently unsealed 2010 transcripts about the decades-simmering RomanPolanski case, and more particularly the critical views of retired prosecutor Roger Gunson.
The gist is that 12 years ago Gunson believed that Judge Lawrence Rittenbrand (now deceased) was a bad apple who had rashly reneged on a plea deal with Polanski’s attorneys.
Is there anything new in these transcripts? Not if you’ve seen Marina Zenovich’s RomanPolanski: WantedandDesired (‘08) and her follow up doc, RomanPolanski: OddManOut (‘12). The whole Gunson critique and the Rittenbrand history is contained, explained and examined every which way.
The long and the short is that the facts about Rittenbrand’s mishandling of this case have been available for well over a decade and damn near 15 years. It was mainly a matter of watching the first Zenovich doc; the second was dessert.
Frank Capra‘s Arsenic and Old Lace (’44), a broad macabre farce set in a Brooklyn rooming house, began as a hit Broadway play that opened in January 1941. (Here’s Brooks Atkinson’s N.Y. Times review.) Capra’s film shot sometime in late ’41 or early ’42, and was originally slated to open on 9.30.42. But the contract with the play’s producers stated that the film would not be released until the Broadway run ended. The play ran for for three and a half years (or until the summer of ’44), so the film wasn’t released until 9.1.44.
I first watched the Capra flick as a kid, and found it okay. I streamed a 480p version two or three years ago, and while I enjoyed Raymond Massey‘s performance (in the part created on the New York stage by Boris Karloff) and Peter Lorre‘s, I found it hyper and strenuous. It charges you up at first, but then it gradually wears you down. And how many thousands of times has the play been performed in high schools?
Criterion is releasing a “new 4K digital transfer” Bluray version on 10.11.22. It’ll look better than ever before, I’m sure, but would want to shell out $31 and change for a copy? Not I.
Chris Nolan wasn’t always a big-deal, big-budget, IMAX-fortified mythologist whose movies were invariably greeted as events. Once upon a time he was just a clever, regular-guy filmmaker. We’re talking about a five-year period when he made Following (’98), Memento (’00) and Insomnia (’02). That Nolan no longer exists, of course. He became CHRIS NOLAN in ’05 with Batman Begins and never looked back. But I miss the 29-year-old Memento guy…I really do.
Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune ('90) delivers one of my all-time favorite endings, which isn't an "ending" as much ironic commentary about the mindset of a rich, very blase sociopath (Jeremy Irons' Claus von Bulow) and the difference between the "little people" and the Fifth Avenue elites who occasionally pop into this or that store. The scene happens between :50 and 1:25. HE comment: The checkout clerk had it coming because she was so unsubtle when she stared at the front page of the New York Post. She did it so blatantly that she forced Von Bulow to respond.
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Mainstream media reporters and editors are generally forbidden…okay, discouraged from filing the kind of straight-from-the-shoulder Monkeypox report that Donald McNeil, the highly respected chronicler of pandemics who reported for TheNew York Times for decades, has postedonCommonSense.
Excerpt #1: “At the moment, unless you are a gay man with multiple or anonymous sex partners, you are probably at not much risk.”
Excerpt #2: “There are two effective vaccines for this disease and one solid treatment, [so] why are we losing the fight? I blame shortages of vaccines and tests, the initialhesitancy by squeamishhealthagencies to openly discuss who was most at risk, and the refusal of organizers of lucrative gay sex parties to cancel them over the past few months, even as evidence mounted that they are super-spreader events.”
Congrats and best wishes to the newly-betrothed Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, but getting hitched in Las Vegas…I’m sorry to say this but Las Vegas is noplacetoexchangevows.
A place this devoid of spirit and romance is badkarma. Getting married in a small-town city hall in Iowa is cool. Or on a rural Tuscan hilltop at magic hour. Or in a small chapel in Paris. Or on a beach in Kauai at dawn. Marriage is not a game of chance — it’s a game of trust. Exchanging vows isn’t about “wheee!” — it’s about “okay, this shit just got real.”
Affleck, a serious poker and blackjack player, has a seemingly ardent affection for Las Vegas, but the central metaphor of that town is about fairy tales and visions of power and dominance, and it always boils down to “did you beat Las Vegas or did it beat you?”
My point is that there’s something delicate and solemn and even mystical about getting married — it’s like saying a prayer together or co-writing a poem. If there’s one place on the planet earth where delicacy, solemnity and mysticism are in short supply, it’s fucking Las Vegas.
The U.S. debut of Park Chan-wook‘s Decision to Leave (MUBI, 10.14) is a few months off, and I’m sure his devoted fans will celebrate every shot, cut and camera move of this slow-moving noir. From a technical standpoint it’s masterful, but it was understood by a certain percentage of Cannes Film Festival critics (i.e., the honest ones) that it didn’t go much further that that.
The Park Chan-wook cabal has insisted for years that the usual narrative elements that define most first-rate films don’t count as much when it comes to PCW, that he’s a world-class auteur because of his high style and excellent chops and that’s all — the same kind of rationale that floated Brian DePalma‘s boat for so many years.
Just remember what I was saying last May, which is that Decision to Leave is a beautifully shot slog if I ever saw one.
Posted on 5.23.22: With all due respect for Park Chan-wook’s smooth and masterful filmmaking technique (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 intriguing for the first hour or so, 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!”
There's a lyric in Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away" that's always rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe you know what I mean and maybe you don't..."God only knows, God makes his plan...the information's unavailable to the mortal man."
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