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Accurate But Surreal

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On the other hand there’s nothing “normal” about wearing a zebra-skin toga or bathrobe, a sartorial statement coordinated with a white bull terrier and a black panther-like dog in the doorway.

Mosholu Brothers

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During that arriving-in-America moment in The Godfather, Part II, and as Francis Coppola’s camera tracks along the deck of the Mosholu, we see twins standing only three or four feet apart — short, full-faced, middle-aged men with the same eyes, nose and mouth. Wait…is that a second set of younger, taller twins standing behind them?

Cruz Is Allegedly Surging

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Six and a half weeks ago the 2022 Oscar nominations were announced, and to everyone’s surprise Parallel Mothers star Penelope Cruz, whom every handicapper had written off weeks earlier, landed a Best Actress nomination. And now, people are saying, she appears to be surging and may even win the Oscar come Sunday.

Maybe.

I’d love to see this happen, of course. As everyone knows (and as I reminded on 2.8.22) Hollywood Elsewhere stood by Cruz for weeks and weeks, alone and resolute against the stiff winds of seeming indifference…the only name-brand columnist who waved weekly flags for her deeply rooted performance.

All the other award-season Yodas were either Doubting Thomases or cautious fence-sitters…damp-finger-to-the-wind equivocators. If you want to make it in this business you have to have heart.

Will This Come To Anything?

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It’s not a secret that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is an arch-conservative, Trump-supporting wacko. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, therefore, that Thomas texted Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows numerous times on 1.6.21, calling Joe Biden’s election victory “the greatest heist of our history” and declaring that then-President Donald Trump “should not concede….this is a fight of good vs. evil.”

Obviously Mrs. Thomas should be subpeonaed to testify, as should Judge Thomas. Will this power couple be subpeonaed? It’s my personal opinion that the leaders of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6h on the U.S. Capitol are, no offense, slow-moving pussies so I guess we’ll see what happens.

Speak For Yourself

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It was presumptuous of Bill McCuddy to say that “we” have all voted for Jessica Chastain for the Most Makeup Best Actress Oscar, or that we’re at least rooting for her to win. I’m not saying she won’t win, mind — her Tammy Faye Bakker was a pretty good performance, all things considered — but I didn’t care for McCuddy’s tone.

Jay Silverheels’ Tonto to Clayton Moore‘s Lone Ranger, “What you mean ‘we’?”

Rise and Fall of Space-Alien Tech Entrepeneur

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A week ago I reported that I’d seen the first five episodes of Elizabeth Meriwether‘s The Dropout, and that as good as Amanda Seyfried‘s performance as the discredited tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes was and is, “I kept asking myself ‘who would be stupid enough to go into business with this creepy character…a woman who, had she been born in the 1940s, could have played an alien on The Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’? Or Ray Walston‘s alien girlfriend in My Favorite Martian?”

“Meriwether’s dialogue is reasonably pro-level for the most part,” I said, “but I can only reiterate that I couldn’t believe in the story because I found it impossible to believe in Seyfried’s Holmes. She’s just too looney-tunes, too ‘off the planet.'”

I’ve since moved past that reaction. I saw episode #6 last night and now I’m mesmerized. I have to admit that the prospect of seeing this bizarre performance artist finally receive her just desserts over the final two episodes (“Heroes“, airing on 3.31 and “Lizzy“, 4.7) seems incredibly delicious. I can’t wait to see her go down, and yet five minutes ago I was afraid to admit this for fear of accused of being accused of harboring misogynist feelings. So just to be safe, I’m going to say…uhm, how should I put this?

Joy Division

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You have to give Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter credit for ruling this particular roost — maternally speaking it’s easily the most despairing and melancholy of the 11 films in question. It’s the first semi-mainstream film to say “some women just don’t have kid-friendly instincts” or “some women are just too caught up in their creative struggles to make room for mundane mothering.” [Chart created by Vulture.]

Ari Aster’s “Disappointment Blvd.” Going to Cannes?

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According to a 6.1.20 article in the Daily Nexus (the paper of the University of California Santa Barbara), hotshot elevated horror helmer Ari Aster (Midsommar, Hereditary) offered a brief description of his next film. It was in the script stage back then but is now completed, I’ve read, and titled Disappointment Blvd.. A24 will release it later this year.

Aster: “All I know is that it’s gonna be four hours long, and [span] 17 years.” Aster has also also called it a “nightmare comedy” or “horror comedy” or words to that effect.

The presumably deceptive logline describes Disappointment Blvd. as “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.” being played by Joaquin Phoenix.

For most of us, the words “starring Joaquin Phoenix” means a film about some kind of obsessive, extreme psychology or behavior…something intriguingly weird and a bit wackazoid. Phoenix used to have the ability to play normal guys but that’s gone — he’s almost a Nic Cage-like figure in the sense of being consumed by his own persona.

Disappointment Blvd.-wise, the odds strongly favor that Phoenix will play a guy who’s so internal and ultra-sensitive that he’s become paranoid and removed from the Average Joe community…this is who Joaquin is, what he’s become…a guy who plays alien locoweeds.

I’m mentioning Disappointment Blvd. because yesterday World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that Aster’s film is (a) “ready” and (b) “now a possibility for Cannes Film Festival competition.” If this happens, great — you know it’ll be an insane film that everyone will have fun with, and that Phoenix (if and when the film appears) will be a prime contender for the festival’s Best Actor award. Let’s just hope that Aster has somehow whittled Disappointment Blvd. down to three hours instead of four. Or better yet, two and a half. hours.

Ruimy adds that A24 might make also bring Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up to Cannes as a competition title. Another potential A24 title, he adds, could be Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter.

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“Thank You For A Very Pleasant Evening”

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Tom Hagen at Jack Woltz‘s dinner table — the 2008 Robert Harris-Gordon Willis version on top, the 2022 4K “restoration” version below. There’s nothing particularly “wrong” with preferring the 2022 version — the oranges, candles, pale amber lampshade and carved wood panelling have good color, but Hagen’s skin tone is a little pinkish…sunburn, sweat. In the 2008 version his skin has a warmer shade. More importantly, it blends in with the general color scheme of the frame. This is why I stand with the 2008 version, which Mr. Willis helped to create anyway so where’s the argument?


Son of “Godfather” Pretenders

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Originally posted on 2.1.22, then immediately paywalled: I’ve said from the beginning that casting of The Offer (4.28), the Paramount + series about the making of The Godfather, would be extra difficult because everyone knows the players so well — faces, voices, mannerisms. Each and every performance would have to deliver a masterful impersonation for the film to really work. The new trailer makes it clear this aspect was a bridge too far.

I’ll tell you right now that Dan Fogler portraying Francis Coppola in The Offer…any Fogler casting in anything is a problem as he always seems to play slovenly, dregs-of-the-gene-pool types, but casting him as Coppola is a jape, an insult. For one thing Coppola has a certain voice that Fogler doesn’t even come close to imitating, plus Coppola was a bit stocky but not a fatass.

I knew that the instant I heard Fogler-as-Coppola speak the famous line “I believe in America”…I knew right away that Fogler was the wrong guy to hire.

My second reaction was “good God, what’s happened to poor Giovanni Ribisi?” He’s turned into a beach ball! This is almost as upsetting as the Bridget Fonda thing. If he wanted to bulk up to play Joe Colombo, he could have gone with a fat suit, no?

As for Miles Teller as Godfather producer Albert Ruddy…well, he doesn’t look anything like early ’70s Ruddy, a 40ish Canadian Jew with graying hair. The 34 year-old Teller, who stepped into the role when Armie Hammer was deep-sixed and soon after caused on-set worries when he refused to be vaccinated, has dark, thick hair and seems closer to his early 30s than early 40s.

Matthew Goode as Robert Evans might be okay.

The one possibly hopeful note is that Michel Tolkin is the screenwriter. The director is Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman).

I still say that Darrell Easton’s I Believe in America is the best “making of The Godfather script” I’ve ever read.

This Again?

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According to L.A. Times film staffer Jen Yamato, the fallout from that Licorice Pizza hiccup in which succeeding Asian wives of a character named Jerry Frick (John Michael Higgins) were made into an Asian punchline…the fallout from this is “bigger than the Oscars.”

It is? Strange as that thing was, it’s over and forgotten now — the ship has sailed. Nobody cares. Oh, and who thinks the 94th Oscars are “big”? Last time I checked the buzzword was “diminished.”