In a Vulture interview with Rachel Handler, actress Alia Skawkat, known for her heavily freckled face, bee-stung nose and short curly hair, has welcomely dismissed speculation that she and Brad Pitt, whom she’s been randomly photographed with for several months, are doing the hunka-chunka. They are, she says, nothing more than pally-wallies.
Handler #1: “The publicity resulting from the Pitt photos was annoying for Shawkat, [although] the whole thing was ultimately positive from an image perspective, the sort of publicity many a celebrity has quite literally paid for. But the second round of public attention — a video of her with heavy stakes — was painful, especially for a queer woman of color (Shawkat is half-Iraqi).”
Handler #2: “The stories that [pushed] the dating narrative seemed perplexed by the whole thing — the word quirky was used more than once to describe Shawkat. ‘To them it’s like, ‘We don’t get it! This girl is weird! She’s so different! Why are they hanging out?’, [Shawkat] says about the tabloids, laughing. ‘You get too close to the prom king, and all of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Well, who is this bitch?’”
Howell: 1. It Happened One Night (Wells reaction: Moderately appealing but Frank Capra is thoroughly over by any reasonable 21st Century standard); 2. One Week (Wells reaction: What?); 3. Two-Lane Blacktop (Wells reaction: I bought the Criterion DVD only to realize what a meandering and enervated thing it is, and seriously lacking in visual intrigue); 4. Y tu mama tambien (Wells reaction: perhaps not a top-tenner but a very fine film); 5. Thelma & Louise (Wells reaction: Driving your car over a cliff is a romantic-nihilist-crap finale, but if you’re going to use this don’t gussy it up with slow-mo photography and a personality clip reel); 6. Easy Rider (Wells reaction: definitely a top-tenner); 7. The Sure Thing (Wells reaction: A likable tits-and-zits ’80s movie, nothing more); 8. The Motorcycle Diaries (Wells reaction: 100% agreement); 9. Duel (Wells reaction: Not sprawling or meditative enough to qualify as real road movie); 10. The Cannonball Run (Wells reaction: pure garbage — a choice that insults and degrades the genre).
From Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries.
Wells: 1. The Grapes of Wrath (first because of the compassion and humanity and assertive political current); 2. The Wizard of Oz (the great grandfather of all road movies); 3. Sideways (“I’m not drinkin’ fuckin’ Merlot!” — the kind of line that the Cannonball Run creators didn’t have the creative edge to even consider using); 4. Badlands (“This is the last time I get together with the hell-bent type”); 5. The Last Detail (again — compassion for sympathetic trapped characters + humor + melancholy resolution); 6. Apocalypse Now (a river is a road and vice versa). 7. Little Miss Sunshine (greatest 21st Century road movie thus far); 8. Easy Rider; 9. The Motorcycle Diaires. 10. Rain Man. Honorable Mentions: Planes Trains and Automobiles, Midnight Run, Five Easy Pieces, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Y tu mama tambien, Road Trip, The Straight Story, Fandango.
The generic road-movie definition calls them stories that happen over the course of a journey. As Howell writes, “The characters in transit have to experience some change to their attitudes and outlook, or else the trip is wasted. They have to not just go somewhere, but more importantly, they have to arrive.” Agreed.
Howell’s kicker — “And if they can do it with a smile, all the better” — is where he and I differ. To hell with smiles as ends in themselves. Remember those smiley buttons from the ’80s? The face of emotional fascism. Smirks and frowns are far more trustworthy.
On 6.20 (only five days ago!) Paul Schraderwrote on Facebook that he’s “troubled by the double standard. We encourage multiracial casting — black Romeos with white Juliets, a female Lear, etc. Yet when a non-Jew plays Shylock or a white plays Othello, this is considered outre and unacceptable.”
HE reply: “Whites may no longer portray non-whites” is fuck-you payback for all the decades (early to mid 20th Century) when whites portrayed other tribes and races with impugnity in films. No one mentions Marlon Brando as Sakini, a native Okinawan, in Teahouse of the August Moon, or Katharine Hepburn as Jade in Dragon Seed, but whitewashing was once par for the course.
Not out of inherently venal reasons, but banal ones. Because Hollywood producers believed that non-white actors would, in many circumstances, diminish box-office returns and that white actors would enhance them.
Don’t forget, however, that as recently as ’07 Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl, a French-born woman of Afro-Cuban descent, in A Mighty Heart, and nobody said boo.
How was this different than Mickey Rooney‘s Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Alec Guinness‘ Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, Ricardo Montalban‘s Japanese Kabuki actor in Sayonara, Natalie Wood‘s Maria in West Side Story, Kurt Jurgens‘ “Captain Lin Nan” in Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Jennifer Jones‘ half-Native American in Duel in the Sun? Should wokesters retroactively cancel Jolie? Should they at least take her to task on Twitter?
In a tribal sense, whites are regarded as deeply flawed and generally problematic. Certainly by the standards of cancel-culture and BLM wokesters. Perhaps not the root of all evil, but the N.Y. Times‘ “1619 Project” made a case that European-descended white-person culture represents a profoundly diseased and guilty heritage, certainly as far as African Americans and Native Americans are concerned.
White actors can therefore not play persons of color for this reason. They must sit on the sidelines and meditate on their basic nature, and perhaps eventually evolve into something better down the road.
Given the alleged racism on the part of John Wayne, the ultimate conservative swaggering white man, I wouldn’t be surprised if Wayne’s horse-riding statue (at the corner of Wilshire and La Cienega) is someday pulled down or defaced by demonstrators. I’m serious — in a world in which a statue of George Washington was defaced and statues of Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key have been toppled, Wayne should be easy pickings.
Director-screenwriter Lewis John Carlino enjoyed a 15-year peak career period, starting with his screenplay for John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds (’66 — an adaptation of David Ely‘s same-titled novel) and more or less ending with the widely acclaimed The Great Santini (’79), which Carlino adapted and directed and which starred Robert Duvall.
In between were screenplays for The Fox (’67), The Brotherhood (’68), The Mechanic (’72), Crazy Joe (’74), The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (’76, which Carlino also directed), and screenplays for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (’77) and Resurrection (’80).
Putting aside matters of taste and sensitivity, Jimmy Kimmel felt free to do blackface skits 20-plus years ago (Comedy Central’s The Man Show, a song from a 1996 comedy Christmas album) because he thought they were reasonably funny and nobody would say boo. Which is what happened until recently. The same calculation and risk assessment was made by Robert Downey, Jr and Ben Stiller when they made Tropic Thunder. And then the culture changed and now everyone who attempted this kind of risque comedy has to apologize. Not a biggie and certainly not an indication of toxic essence. The goal posts have simply been moved. Burt Lancaster wore black-guy makeup in Scorpio, a 1973 Michael Winner spy film. Big deal.
HE agrees that Jon Stewart‘s Irresistable (Focus Features, streaming on 6.26) is bit too mild-mannered for its own good. It lacks provocation, nerve, now-ness. It’s not just that this rural political-spin comedy is set in ’17 or thereabouts, but the film itself seems to be have been made two or three years ago. Or 10 or 15. And yes, I agree that it’s not especially funny. It is, however, mildly amusing in an LQTM sort of way. And it’s a smooth package by any fair standard — nicely shot, performed, paced, edited.
So I don’t see the big problem. It’s something to stream (or not) this weekend if you’ve nothing better to do. You and your wife or girlfriend or pallies sit on the couch, pay the money, etc. And yet the critics have ganged up and beaten the shit out of this poor, harmless little film. The Rotten Tomatoes gang has rendered a 39% rating, and the Metacritics have given it a lousy 50% score. People will watch what they want to watch, of course, but score-wise this puppy is basically D.O.A.
I would only repeat that it’s not a criminal offense to be a tepid, mildly diverting chuckler or, you know, a nice, meh-level, ripple-free distraction. You know what I mean. It’s not a bother to watch it. It doesn’t irritate or piss you off. It just does the old soft shoe and wraps things up (credits included) within 102 minutes.
Set in some small town in rural farm country (Wisconsin? Iowa? does it matter?), it’s about an election for mayor of said town that becomes, for curious reasons, a wildly expensive, nationally hyped super-show.
Steve Carell and Rose Byrne are hot-shot political operators (Democrat and Republican respectively) who descend upon this small hamlet and stir things up. Chris Cooper is the soft-spoken candidate you want to see win, etc.
Stewart’s script was “partially inspired by the 2017 special election for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, where the Democratic and Republican parties and groups supporting them spent more than 55 million dollars combined — the most expensive House Congressional election in U.S. history.”
Agreed — watching Carell deliver another variation on his standard screen persona (a neurotic, intensely focused, clenched-fist fussbudget with a spoiled, effete attitude) has felt old or at least over-deployed for some time. I still think his peak moment happened in Little Miss Sunshine (14 years ago!) and that his last well-grounded, fully-charged performance happened in The Big Short (’15). But I didn’t mind him in Irresistable. I was just “okay, here we go again, not bad, whatever.”
And the film does deliver a hidden-card ending that’s…well, somewhat unexpected. At least it’s not Welcome to Mooseport.
Remember Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear“, which happened on the Washington mall in October 2010? (And which I attended.) The focus was on politics as usual, and the idea was more or less that “we, the people are better than all the left-right rancor so let’s calm down and listen to each pther.” Or something like that. Irresistable is drawn from a similar well.
The Irresistable supporting players — Byrne, Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, Will Sasso, et. al. — are fine. Bobby Bukowski‘s cinematography and Bryce Dessner‘s score are fine. It’s all fine. It was partly filmed in Rockmart, Georgia, which is roughly 30 miles northwest of Atlanta.
The HFPA’s decision to air the 2021 Golden Globe awards on Sunday, 2.28.21 — the final day of Oscar eligibility per last week’s AMPAS announcement — is bold and shrewd. Obviously. It makes the Globes a major award season influencer as the Oscar voting process doesn’t begin until March 5 with final balloting concluding on 4.20.
2021 Oscar timetable: Nomination voting begins on Friday, 3.5.21, and ends on Wednesday, 3.10.21. Nominations will be announced on Monday, 3.15. The Final voting occurs between 4.15 and 4.20. So the Golden Globes will be over and done with ten days before Oscar nomination balloting finishes and seven to eight weeks before final Oscar voting.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will host the 2.28 GG ceremony. The Golden Globes are typically held on the first or second Sunday of January. The 2020 edition was held on Sunday, 1.15.
I’m so sick of this. We all are. I’m still living like a cloistered monk for the most part, not counting trips to the market and weekend hikes (plus two recent dental trips to Mexico). I feel so deflated, so gloomy.
Three or four weeks ago I was nursing this fantasy that things would gradually level off for the most part, followed by a modest fall surge sometime in late September or October. I’m telling myself that the spikes have mainly been caused by careless red-state bumblefucks, and that’s probably true for the most part. If they’d only been stricter with themselves for a bit longer! The European union nations lived and behaved in a fairly hardcore fashion, and now they’re experiencing a serious decline across the board.
But not your rough-and-ready, whiteside-wearing Americans! We reserve the right to be assholes, to fart upwind, to go mask-free, to throw fat grandma off the train if need be, etc.
From “Coronavirus Cases Spike Across Sun Belt as Economy Lurches into Motion,” a 6.14 N.Y. Time story by Julie Bosman and Mitch Smith: “The spikes in cases bring leaders in these states to a new crossroads: (a) Accept the continued rise in infections as an expected cost of reopening economies or (b) consider slowing the lifting of restrictions aimed at stopping the spread or even imposing a new set of limits.”
Ian Holm‘s death wasn’t a terrible thing — he lived a rich and radiant existence for 88 years — but news editors and commentators calling him “the man who played Bilbo Baggins” in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series is a gruesome send-off.
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I first took notice 46 years ago when Holm played Nicholas Porter, the cruise-ship executive in Richard Lester‘s Juggernaut (’74), and especially five years later when he played Ash-the-robot in Ridley Scott‘s Alien (’79). His Sam Mussabini role in Hugh Hudson‘s Chariots of Fire (’81) was also noteworthy.
Agree or not, but these are the three Holm performances that immediately came to mind when I heard the news.
I don’t want to get too cranked about Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, a terrorist-plane-hijack thriller that’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Because as good as it is, it’s nowhere near the level of Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 — by any measure the gold-standard in this realm.
A poor man’s version of that brilliant 2006 film, 7500 is claustrophically designed (the whole thing takes place in a pilot compartment of a commercial jet during a Berlin-to-Paris flight) and technically effective as far as it goes. It held me in its grip, and I understand why Indiewre‘s Eric Kohn has called it “the most exciting cinematic ride of the year so far.”
But at the same time I was feeling a wee bit irritated by Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s performance as Tobias Ellis, an overly emotional, bordering-on-girlyman co-pilot coping with a team of 9/11-styled fanatics. (By the way, did you know that “Muslim hijackers” is a “racist trope” and that a film that serves up same is dealing in “antiquated stereotypes“?)
The initial storming of the cabin results in the death of the pilot (Carlo Kitzlinger‘s “Michael”) but also with JGL managing to bludgeon a would-be hijacker into unconsciousness as well as keep the other two baddies out by locking the cabin door.
It then becomes a question of whether or not the most belligerent of the two lock-outs can goad JGL into opening the door in order to save the lives of two hostages with knives at their throats — a passenger and a flight attendant named Gokce (Aylin Tezel) who happens to be JGL’s wife.
We know as well as JGL that if the hijackers get into the cabin they’ll crash the jet into the middle of a major city and kill God knows how many people. Letting them in is therefore not an option. And yet director-writer Vollrath tries to wring emotional tension out of the fact that Gokce’s throat will be slit if JGL doesn’t open up…”oh, no…oh, please!”
Do you not understand the basics, Vollrath (and for that matter JGL)? The terrorists don’t get into the cockpit, and so as much as it makes us sad and anguished I’m afraid it’s “hasta la vista, baby” as far as Gokce is concerned.
A cowardly man might say “oh, no, my poor wife is going to be killed, but maybe I can save her life by allowing the terrorists into the cockpit and letting them fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower.” Only a whining, squeeky little mouse would think that way, but that’s what JGL does. He frets and grimaces and goes “oooh no, don’t kill her!” as his panicked eyes fill with tears.
Fucking little candy-ass…grow a pair! Have you ever seen a Clint Eastwood film? Learn to snarl.
And then an even bigger candy-ass comes along — Omid Memar‘s “Vedat”, a junior terrorist (18 years old) who’s a bit conflicted about mass murder. JGL senses early on that Vedat isn’t all that hardcore and might even be a soft touch. This leads to a big tussle-in-the-cockpit scene in which Vedat is openly moaning and whimpering about whether or not to thwart his radical colleagues and save the lives of JGL and the passengers. Except the whimpering goes on too long, and I realized about about 30 seconds in that Memar sounds like the crying and moaning Joan Cusack in that control booth panic scene in Broadcast News.
Here’s the Cusack mp3 — the scene itself is after the jump.
For God knows how many tens of millions, Vera Lynn‘s “We’ll Meet Again” is known for one thing and one thing only — as a tuneful accompaniment to a montage of nuclear explosions at at the very end of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove (’64).
Here are three guesses as to why Ravindran, Variety‘s London-based international editor, dropped the ball.
One, because the 30something staffer wanted to write a positive-minded, hooray-for-a-legendary-singer tribute to Lynn, and felt that the satirical Strangelove association would somehow diminish that. Or two, because Claudia Eller, who’s been furloughed from her Variety editor-in-chief post over safety/sensitivity issues, wasn’t there to catch the omission. Neither did Eller’s successor, Cynthia Littleton.
