This evening I caught a 35mm projection of Frank Perry’s PlayItAsItLays at the Los Feliz branch of the American Cinematheque. Four days ago I said I was very worried that they might show a pink print or one full of scratches. To my great surprise and delight tonight’s print was damnnearperfect — clean and smooth, only a few barely noticeable scratches at the end of the reels. Amazing! It was like time-travelling back to ‘72 and watching it a week or two after opening day. Plus good sound. Apologies to A.C. management for my previous lack of faith.
The basic idea here (and it’s not mine!) is that Shelley Winters‘ more-or-less innocent victim character in A PlaceInTheSun (’51) is irksome if not profoundly irritating, and that…well, read Mr. Ormsby‘s reaction.
QuestiontoHEcommunity: What other significant characters whose death or removal have you found yourself wishing for?
Official Showtime copy: “Super-Pumped is about “the roller-coaster ride of Uber, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful and most destructive companies, told from the perspective of the company’s CEO Travis Kalanick, who is ultimately ousted in a boardroom coup after tense internal and external battles that ripple with unpredictable consequences.”
If this was a one-off, Super-Pumped might be analogous to The Social Network — another story of a smart but obnoxious mover-and-shaker who launches an enormously successful company with a new idea. But no — it’s an anthology series from Brian Koppelman and David Levien, based on the same-titled 2019 book by Mike Isaac.
The strong cast includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kyle Chandler, Kerry Bishé, Babak Tafti, Mousa Hussein Kraish, Hank Azaria, Elisabeth Shue and Uma Thurman.
During her ascendant, hot-rocket period (’85 to ’92), Sinead O’Connor was one of the greatest rockers ever — a ballsy poet, provocateur, wailer, screecher, torch carrier…a woman with a voice that mixed exquisite style and control with primal pain. She was / is magnificent. I still listen to The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, and I still love “Madinka”, “Jerusalem”, “Troy” and “Nothing Compares 2 U”…all of it, the primal energy, the shifting pitch of her voice, the Irish punk banshee thing…wow.
It doesn’t matter that this happened 30 to 35 years ago, and that O’Connor has lived a convulsive, ebb-and-flow life ever since…one torrential spew or tussle or throw-down after another…or that she now performs in Muslim robes (having converted two or three years ago)…what matters is that from age 19 through 26, or for roughly eight years, O’Connor was a blazing art-rocker of the first order and an unstoppable historic force…like Bob Dylan was between ’61 and the motorcycle accident + Blonde on Blonde crescendo of ’66.
Kathryn Ferguson’s Nothing Compares, a 96-minute doc that I saw late yesterday afternoon, is mainly about O’Connor’s rise, peak and fall over that eight-year period. (The last 30 years are acknowledged but mainly in the credit crawl.) Sinead’s climactic crisis, of course, was that infamous mass rejection that followed her defiant “tearing up the Pope photo” performance on a 10.3.92 airing of Saturday Night Live, which then was followed by the booing she received at a Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert in Madison Square Garden about two weeks later.
She never recovered the magic mojo.
Ferguson’s doc says three important things. One, Sinead’s fiery temperament came from a horribly abusive childhood, principally due to her monstrous mother (who died in a car crash in ’86), and as a musician she radiated such a bruised, scarred and beat-to-hell psychology that…well, blame her awful mom and her shitty dad also. Two, her peak period was magnificent, and if nothing else the doc will remind you of this. Three, Sinead was right about the Pope, or rather the institutional abuse of children at the hands of pedophile priests, and so she was way ahead of her time. (The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team made a huge splash with their ’02 report about the Catholic church hiding the criminal misdeeds of priests abusing Boston-area children, and of course Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight came along in ’15.)
O’Connor has soldiered on and kept plugging for the last 30 years, and obviously there’s an intrepid aspect and bravery in that, and yet Ferguson ignores the blow-by-blow — the lurching, shifting, sporadic turbulence that has marked O’Connor’s life ever since (not including the devastating suicide of her son Shane earlier this month, which happened well after the film had wrapped).
Side observation #1: The 55-year-old O’Connor doesn’t appear in the doc as an on-camera talking head, although she narrates a good portion of it. I have to say that the deep, guttural sound of her present-day voice — honestly? — sounds like a dude’s. Booze, cigarettes, whatever…the speaking voice she had in interviews from the late ’80s and early ’90s is gone.
Side observation #2: The Prince estate refused to allow Ferguson to use “Nothing Compares 2 U”, as the song was authored by Prince and owned by the estate. What a dick move! A low-budget doc that pays devotional tribute to O’Connor and the Prince estate refuses to allow her most famous recording to be heard? Jesus…this has to be one of the lowest scumbag moves in rock-music history.
Side observation #3: Who were those assholes who booed O’Connor at a Dylan concert, of all things? Her manner of conveyance was overly blunt, agreed, and she probably should have toned it down, but c’mon, her Pope protest was about protecting children from abuse and pain and thousands of Dylan fans fucking booed her?
According to a recently-deleted CNN report, President Biden allegedly told Ukranian president Zellensky that a Russian invasion is “imminent”…virtually certain come February…and that Kiev could be “sacked.” There’s a suspicion that “journalists were covertly fed Russian intelligence disinformation, so [CNN] removed it once they realized the mistake.”
BREAKING: We have recovered the Ukraine call report that @JakeTapper and CNN just deleted
A bit less than 30 years ago I profiledBridget Fonda for the N.Y.Times. The piece, largely based on my visiting the Arizona set of Bodies, RestandMotion and sharing a nice dinner with her, ran in August ‘92. I liked Bridget a lot; I even felt what you might call a semi-profound kinship with her.
And so, three decades on, I have no comment about the alleged, recently snapped photos of her that have just surfaced. No comment except I literally cried out when I saw them. We all get older but…well, bear with me. Sorry but I’m startled, partly because she’s the niece of Jane Fonda and there’s a certain image or association that comes with that.
That said, I hope Bridget is happy. Maybe the Mail made a mistake. Saying no more.
But of course, Joe Biden's condescending, less-than-supportive attitude towards Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings is an episode he won't want to revive by nominating her to fill Justice Breyer's seat on the Supreme Court.
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I’m suddenly feeling hugely depressed by the announcement of the five 2022 DGA Awards nominees. The Big Five are Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza, Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast, Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story and Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune.
Does this mean these films will come to be regarded as the leading Best Picture nominees? Not necessarily but quite possibly, and this is what has sent me into a howling tailspin.
Because among these five and in the eyes of the egalitarian Movie Godz, only West Side Story and Licorice Pizza are really and truly good enough in a genuinely discriminating, emotional, full-hearted sense to warrant top-five status, and yet we all know they probably won’t win because, according to conventional thinking, (a) WSS wasn’t really necessary to begin with plus it died at the box-office and (b) Licorice Pizza, which I liked for the most part, is regarded as too catch-as-catch-can, too meandering.
I’m also gloomed out because the DGA gang has rejected King Richard — HE’s pick for 2021’s finest film. Seriously, this is very, very upsetting.
Im short, it’s suddenly hit me like a waffle iron crashing into the left side of my face that the three films most likely to win the big prize are Belfast, The Power of the Dog and Dune. We all know that Dune can’t win (too many people hated it) so it’s down to Belfast and The Power of the Dog.
Here are HE’s picks for the ten best films of ’21 — King Richard, Parallel Mothers, West Side Story, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Worst Person in the World, A Hero, Riders of Justice, No Time To Die, The Beatles: Get Back and Zola. The second ten are Cyrano, Licorice Pizza, The Card Counter, In The Heights, The Last Duel, No Sudden Move, Titane, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Drive My Car and Summer of Soul.
I can’t believe this is happening, but it is happening. I’m shocked, I’m stunned, I’m out of breath, etc. Some where in West Los Angeles, Sid Ganis is chuckling.
If these five are indeed the hottest Best Picture contenders, HE believes that the only truly justified winner in the eyes of the Godz would be West Side Story.
WGA Original Screenplay noms: Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up, The French Dispatch, King Richard, Licorice Pizza.
Drive My Car knows exactly what it's doing, and it delivers on that mission and self-knowledge over a period of 179 minutes, which is unnecessary. A two-hour film that lasts 179 minutes can't be uplifting or transcendent. DriveMyCar is a thoughtful, melancholy slog for griefmonkeys, and with way too many cigarettes smoked. It warrants respect but it shouldn't leapfrog out of the Best Int'l Feature category. Meditative smarthouse material for Justin Chang-level elites and hoity-toities. Hollywood Elsewhere says "sorry but no Best Picture nomination."
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