Full respect and affection for the late Phil Lesh, who famously and joyously played bass for the Grateful Dead for 30 years (’65 to ’95) and then kept playing with The Other Ones and one or two other groups into the early teens.
Lesh was 84 when he passed on 10.25.24, apparently from cancer.
This may sound off but when I heard of Lesh’s departure, the first thing I flashed on was that Altamont footage from Gimme Shelter (’70)…that brief discussion between Lesh, Dead headliner Jerry Garcia and Santana drummer Mike Shrieve about the Hells Angels beating people up, etc.
Jerry Garcia: “Oh, that’s what the story is here?” Mike Shrieve (Santana): “Yeah.” Garcia: “Oh, bummer.” Shrieve: “Really, man. I mean, like…it’s scary.” Phil Lesh: “Who’s doing all the beating?” Shrieve: “Hell’s Angels.” Lesh: “Hell’s Angels beating on musicians?” Shrieve: “Marty[Balin] got beat up. Hit in the face.” Lesh: “It doesn’t seem right, man.” Shrieve: “It’s really weird, man. It’s really weird.” Garcia: “Oh, man. Really?”
Doesn’t “seem” right? My immediate reaction way back when was “hey, Phil, don’t go out on a limb!”
A B-plus grade isn’t a major problem, but it is a slight one. It means that a certain percentage of the Conclave respondents had an issue or argument withg the ending. trust me. Traditional Catholics, traditional-minded people, Average Joes and Janes, etc. I saw it for a third time on Thursday night (I had to flush that awful Montclair Film Festivql screening out of my head), and there was a somewhat older couple sitting behind me, and when the lights came up they were obviously a bit displeased, and perhaps even a bit stunned. I could feel their vibe
The word around the campfire is that Paul Mescal may be a bit of a problem in Gladiator II.
Friendo: “Critics are going to be too scared to say he’s terrible in the movie but two [fellows] I spoke to tell me he has zero range and is incredibly miscast.”
HE: “Because he’s…what. too dweeby or peculiar? Not macho enough?”
Friendo: “They’re telling me Mescal is not as muscular or intense a presence as Russell Crowe was. [They’re also saying that] Denzel is far and away the best in show.”
I asked a certain thorny and contentious film guy, whom I assume has seen Gladiator II (although I don’t know this for a fact), whether or not this assessment is fair. His response: “Fuck off.”
Film guy #2: “NOT. AT. ALL. I was actually surprised how good he was, immediately putting him in the Best Actor race when I didn’t expect to. Talked to a few Oscar voters there who loved it and him. I know you don’t like him so you may not go in with an open mind. He is strong in this, even reminding me in a couple of shots of Spartacus-era Kirk Douglas.”
Paul Mescal tells the story of meeting Denzel Washington for the first time on the set of ‘GLADIATOR ll’
The reason she hasn’t yet agreed is almost certainly because her people don’t trust her unscripted abilities…they’re afraid that she’ll somehow misspeak or put her foot in her mouth.
I think Kamala needs to step out of the scripted arena and let her hair down. She could finally address how woke insanity took over the progessive left in 2020. She could candidly state that the Biden administration, reacting to the cruelty of Trump’s resrictive border policy, arguably leaned a bit too far in the other direction for three years. Why hasn’t she said the obvious about the vice-presidency, which is that it’s essentially a ceremonial, rubber-stamp job that has no independent agency? (Ask Lyndon Johnson and John Nance Garner.) Chris Christie said the same thing yesterday on The View.
As we all know, Kamala flubbed it when Anderson Cooper asked if the Biden administration had made any mistakes and, if so, whether those mistakes taught her anything.
What she should have said: “As you know, Anderson, that’s a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ question. If I admit to mistakes I’ll be trashed for throwing President Biden under the bus, and if I say there were no mistakes I’ll be called a delusional liar and a fantasist.
“It’s part of human nature to make occasional mistakes, and hopefully to learn from them, and c’mon…there’s never been a White House administration that didn’t screw up here and there. I could acknowledge rhetorically or admit that some believe Joe’s team tactically screwed up on the Afghnistan withdrawal. I could acknowledge rhetorically that some maintain we were too liberal in our border policy for two or three years. But I’m not going to say that because it’s a no-win. To be human is to be fallible. I believe in learning, growing and improving our game. I’ll leave it here.”
Trump: Can you imagine Kamala doing this show?
Rogan: I could imagine her doing this show.
Trump: She'd be laying on the floor.
Rogan: She was supposed to do it. And she might still do it. I hope she does.
How many minors have had bottom surgery between 2020 and the present?
“The number of people seeking gender-affirming surgeries such as breast and chest operations or genital reconstruction nearly tripled during the three years before the coronavirus pandemic, a new study shows.
“The number of patients getting these operations nearly tripled from 4,552 in 2016 to 13,011 in 2019” — the Trump years — “before decreasing slightly in 2020 amid the coronavirus restrictions that postponed or halted many types of non-emergency operations, according to the study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.
“Gender-affirming surgeries were most popular with young adults; more than 25,000 people ages 19 to 30 received these procedures. Fewer than 8% of patients — a total of 3,678 — were 12- to 18-year-olds, a group scrutinized by lawmakers pursuing restrictions mainly in conservative states.” — USA Today, 8.23.23.
Megyn Kelly stuns the Bill Maher audience by laying out the facts about transitioning. After they recoil in disgust, Bill Maher corroborates Megyn Kelly 'We are definitely doing that': Megyn Kelly: "What we're doing to our children with this trans insanity. We are chopping off… pic.twitter.com/3ZIVKPFkim
Conclave begins with the death of an elderly pope…that and the subsequent need to choose a replacement. Ralph Fiennes portrays plays Cardinal Lawrence, the British-born manager of the conclave — a cloistered Vatican City gathering of cardinals — that will choose a new pontiff.
Fiennes’ performance is exquisitely subdued…highly concentrated but low-key, solemn, down-under. You can read every thought and consideration on his lined, late-50ish face, but on a seep-out, leak-out basis.
Fiennes does, however, have fun with a pair of vocal outbursts…brief Shakespearean gushers.
One at the conclusion of an intense discussion with John Lithgow‘s Cardinal Tremblay. It ends with Tremblay suggesting that for discretion’s sake “this conversation never took place”, and then walking off. Lawrence waits a couple of beats before bellowing “but it did take place!”
10 or 15 minutes later Fiennes is discussing the latest pope vote with Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who hails from Kabul. Benitez tells the reluctant Lawrence that he’s voted for him three or four times. Fiennes goes loud again: “I don’t want your vote!”
In my mind these hors d’oeuvres are almost in the same ballpark as Daniel Day Lewis‘s “I drink your milkshake” in There Will Be Blood. Except Fiennes sounds more like Ian McKellen.
I’ve said this once or twice before, hut if WHE were to release a Bluray of the boxy version of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder, I would buy it in a split second.
All through the 20th Century and into the 21st I watched Dial M for Murder at 1.33 or 1.37. I also saw it in 1.33 or 1.37 3D at the Eighth Street Playhouse in ’80. And the compositions and framings were and are entirely satisfactory and didn’t need to have their tops and buttons CHOPPED OFF WITH A MEAT CLEAVER.
Sidenote: This is a very small deal and barely worth mentioning, but in Dial M for MurderRay Milland and Grace Kelly‘s street-level, one-bedroom flat is not in Mayfair, as Marty says below at the 1:19 mark, but Maida Vale.
The 1.78 or 1.85 a.r. on the Dial M For Murder Bluray was favored because of one reason only — because this a.r. conforms to the 16 x 9 aspect ratio of high-def flat panels. The people who made this call were nothing but a FASCIST REVISIONIST GANG.
“We have a vision,” their manifesto reads. ‘A vision of all films shot from the early ’50s to mid ’60s with their tops and bottoms CHOPPED OFF, and we will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Because of 16 x 9 high-def screens, we are committed to killing visual information. And we will succeed because we have the factual data and research to back up the assertion that these films were shot to be shown at 1.85, but could also be shown at 1.33 or 1.37 for purist film buff screenings and for television airings and VHS and DVD versions.
“Repeat after us: WE HAVE A VISION, and it is about KILLING VISUAL INFORMATION by slicing off the tops and bottoms of films.”
I’m physically sickwithworry about what may happen 12 days hence.
James Carville has noted that just before close elections things tend to break one way or another, and right now…dear God I can’t even think it, much less say it.
I’ve suffered nightmares in which I’m about to be executed…two or three minutes before being led up the wooden steps of the gallows or tied to a PathsofGlory firing-squad post, and the burning, churning stomach acid sensations have been so intense and convulsive that I’ve awoken in a cold panic, Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo-style.
That’s what I’m feeling now except I’m wide awake, and God help us all. I’m Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse, tied buck naked to a four-poster with Satan approaching….”this isn’t a dream…this is reallyhappening!”
Tens of thousands of registered nihilists are telling pollsters that they believe that slapping down the extreme left (a goal I completely sympathize with) is more important than preserving a semblance of order, decency and democracy…
These under-educated, rural-or-suburban heartland psychos apparently believe that a Trumpocalypse, an authoritarian, Hitlerian revenge scenario…a threatened state of siege orchestrated by a clearly declining 78 year-old, foam-at-the-mouth criminal sociopath…is preferable to handing the reins of power to a decent, sensible humanist normie who may underwhelm due to her regulated mediocrity but then again she might not…who knows?
I’ve been trusting all along that fundamental decency would prevail in the end. Now I don’t know.
What kind of sick, reality-denying animals believe that bringing Trump back would be a good thing? I feel like I’m barricaded inside that house in Night of the Living Dead and that zombie Trumpies, naked and growling, are pounding on the doors.
Then again KamalaHarris has mostly done this to herself.
All she had to do was renouncetheprogressivecrazies and pledge herself to sensible, constructive, classic liberalism, and she didn’t have the stones to do that…she didn’t even have the minimal courage to say that white males needn’t be a problem and that healthy masculinity can and should be a vital cultural ingredient…she couldn’t even admit that wokeinsanityisathing, which it has been, of course, since ‘18 or thereabouts…
Would it do any good if GeneralJohnKelly, DonaldTrump’s longest serving chief of staff, were to hold a press conference and repeat everything he said on the record to TheAtlanticJeffreyGoldberg and the N.Y. Times? If doing so would move the needle even slightly, he should do this immediately. The cause of decency demandsit.
Jill Stein could come to her senses, but of course, being who and what she is, that’s not an option.
So is it fair to infer that Universal and John Chu‘s Wicked (11.22) is a some kind of family-friendly delivery device for queer theology?
Cynthia Erivo‘s real-life sexuality and the metaphor of Elphaba Thopp’s frowned-upon outsider identity aside, Wicked has no openly queer characters, but “this hasn’t stopped fans from exploring several queer-coded elements and metaphors,” says one of the queer-authored essays I’ve been reading.
Elphaba has a thing early on for Jonathan Bailey‘s Fiyero Tigelaar, a “Winkie prince”, but the deeper, more profound friendship is between Elphaba (destined to become tHe Wicked Witch of the West) and Ariana Grande‘s Galinda Upland, who becomes Glinda the Good Witch (played by BillieBurke in The Wizard of Oz).
I’m presuming that square, middle-American moms and dads are most likely overjoyed that yet another family-angled entertainment from Hollywood wokesters will be selling queer theology to their kids. I for one am delighted on Sutton’s behalf.
