“Butler doesn’t sound like the Real McCoy,” I wrote. “Lacking that unique vocal signature (smooth tones, purry phrasing, Memphis inflections), Butler is just another Elvis imitator.”
A journalist friendo has written to explain that “Butler’s singing is only for the younger Elvis. Baz explained all that at the CinemaCon presentation with Butler on stage and it is evident in the film.”
HEreply: “If you say so, okay. But of course, the younger Elvis (mid ‘50s) sounded like Elvis of the ‘60s and ‘70s, being the same person with the same larynx and vocal chords and whatnot. So it’s mystifying.”
“Solo explored Han Solo’s younger years, with Alden Ehrenreich taking on the role of the smuggler originated by Harrison Ford. The film has its admirers, but it made less at the box office than any other live-action Star Wars movie. Solo’s swagger may be toosingularforanotheractortoreplicate.
“‘There should be moments along the way when you learn things,’ says Kennedy. ‘Now it does seem so abundantly clear that we can’t do that.’
“Kennedy would’ve been fine if she’d cast Ansel Elgort. Elgort was an obvious choice to everyone in the galaxy except Kennedy and Steven Spielberg.
Instead she chose Alden Ehrenreich, a too-short, charisma-challenged, completely miscast actor who had to be professionally coached in a seemingly desperate effort to capture the insouciant vibe and commanding physicality of young Ford.
Posted on 4.17.18: “Alden Ehrenreich was almost certainly chosen to play the rogue-ish Han Solo by producer Kathy Kennedy because she felt obliged to kiss the ring of her longtime boss Steven Spielberg.
“The famed director discovered Ehrenreich in 2003, when the 28-year-old actor was 14, after seeing him in a Bat Mitzvah video at a party. Spielberg’s endorsement eventually led to Ehrenreich getting an agent, landing gigs on TV series like Supernatural and CSI, and being cast as Vincent Gallo‘s younger brother in Francis Coppola‘s Tetro (’09).
“So when you’re watching Solo a few weeks hence and asking yourself how the producers could have possibly decided that the too-short, beady-eyed Ehrenreich could fill Harrison Ford‘s shoes in a way that audiences would totally accept (instead of hiring Baby Driver‘s Ansel Elgort, the obvious choice), remember that Aldenreich was primarily chosen as a deferential gesture to big bossman Beardo.”
Yesterday an official trailer surfaced for Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a Searchlight/Hulu release costarring Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack and Isabella Laughland. The three-hander begins streaming on Hulu on 6.17.
Thought #1: Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat through Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and I was more or less okay with it, minor issues aside. It’s a reasonably engaging two-hander about a 55-year-old woman (Emma Thompson‘s “Nancy Stokes”, who doesn’t look 50ish as much as her actual age, which is 62) and a handsome young sex worker (Daryl McCormack‘s Leo Grande”). The widowed Nancy has led a rather sex-less and certainly orgasm-free life, and she’s hired Leo in order to sample the real thing.
The film (97 minutes) is basically three sexual and very personal encounters in a hotel room, and one in a hotel bar. (Or something like that.)
It’s an intimate, occasionally amusing, open-hearted exploration of an older woman’s sexuality and what a transformational thing good sex can be (nothing wrong with that!), along with the gradually building rapport between Nancy and Leo. It’s smoothly and nimbly performed, especially by Thompson.
Female friendo: This Sports Illustrated thing was news on Twitter yesterday
HE: I don’t agree with Jordan Petersen. I think that big-curve Rubenesque bodies are (or at least can be) mildly hot.
Female friendo: I don’t think she looks that bad.
HE: She has the body that Marilyn Monroe had in Some Like It Hot. Okay, Monroe was slightly thinner but close.
Female friendo: Yeah, it’s proportional. There’s no denying it’s a sexy photo. Not grotesque. In general I agree that the fat acceptance movement is insanity but this particular photo doesn’t exactly prove that point.
HE: Petersen can say she’s “not beautiful” — that’s just an opinion. He’s not evil for saying this. But I like zaftig and, to some extent, Rubenesque women. But there’s a line in which Rubenesque tips over into overweight, and then fat, and then obese, and then morbidly obese.
Rod Stewart did a brief interview on Real Time with Bill Maher last night, and it was during this chat that I decided that “Some Guys Have All The Luck” is my all-time favorite Stewart track. In my head the 1973 Persuaders version (written by Jeff Fortgang) doesn’t even exist. The 1984 Stewart version is too perfectly realized — an open-and-shut case.
Stewart was 39 when he recorded “Some Guys” — he’s now 77. He doesn’t look drastically younger, but his appearance is pretty good, considering all the partying. And he seems happy.
In ’86 or thereabouts I party-chatted with Alana Stewart Hamilton, who had divorced Stewart (or vice versa) a year or two earlier. I don’t precisely remember how long I lasted, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of ten minutes, give or take. I remember feeling good about that.
As HE regulars know, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone is a standout contributor to Voir, the David Fincher-produced Netflix special about movie worship.
Sasha authored and narrated “Summer of the Shark,” a short film about her movie-impressed childhood in the mid ’70s. I shared my enthusiasm five months ago.
Anyway, Netflix is pushing Sasha’s work in two Emmy categories — Outstanding Narrator and Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program.
These Portland State University students who are former PSU professor hassling Peter Boghossian because he’s playing a “game” that might rattle the delicate sensibilities of trans people or which doesn’t necessarily involve kowtowing to the wokester party line…these students are bad news.
YouTube guy: “These are spoiled children and adult enablers who have never learned anything and want a special status given to them because they demand it. If you disagree it’s ‘harmful’ and if you question it, it’s ‘violence’ against them.”
Anyone who infers that free and open speech might “hurt” or cause “harm” or “trauma” to a non-binary person who uses “they” and”them” pronouns…no offense but if we were living under a third-century Roman dictatorship and I was the dictator, I might have these PSU students thrown to the lions…who knows? It would depend on my mood.
Boghossian: “Following the unexpected cancellation of our Reverse Q&A at Brown University, we created an ad hoc event on the streets of Portland. Here, we are exploring the reasoning behind agreement or disagreement with the claim: ‘There are only two genders.’ We were approached by a group of students and here’s what happened.”
Boghossian’s crew filmed this video on May 11, 2022 outside a Portland State University building that houses the department of social work.
Say it again: TopGun: Maverick is a totally square, totally flash-bang, sirloin steak, right down the middle, Tom Cruise-worshipping, un-woke, stiff-saluting, high-velocity, bull’s-eye popcorn pleasure machine.
If you submit to it, that is. For this is a formula thing, this movie…one super-mechanized, high-style, bucks-up thrill ride with a few heart moments sprinkled in. Au Hasard Balthazar, it’s not, so if you see it with, say, a Mark Harris attitude (and he wasn’t wrong when he put down the original Top Gun nine years ago), you won’t have as good of a time.
If you can just park your quibbles and show obeisance before power…if you can surrender to this military glamour fantasy, this glossy Joseph Kosinski breath-taker, this thundering Cruise + ChrisMcQuarrie + JerryBruckheimer G-force engine, this audience-friendly, holy-shit delivery device…if you submit you’ll enjoy it and then some.
What else are you going to do? Fight it? Stage a protest with speeches and placards?
Everything in TopGun: Maverick is hardcore, highly strategized, mechanized, high-octaned, and totally fucking shameless. It’s like a two-hour trailer for itself. High style, brash energy, fleet editing, classic rock (even the 65-year-old “Great Balls of Fire” is celebrated), movie-star smiles, TopGun nostalgia and a totally driller-killer finale.
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) is a somewhat rakish, middle-aged loner who lives only to fly solo while pushing the limits. After losing his test pilot gig, Mav is assigned to be an instructor at the Top Gun Academy in San Diego. His students include Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of Anthony Edwards‘ “Goose” who despises Maverick for taking his name off the Naval Academy list. (There was a reason.) There’s also the brash Hangman (Glen Powell) and a cool woman pilot, Phoenix (Monica Barbaro).
Maverick’s former rival Iceman (Val Kilmer), a retired admiral, has convinced the commanders that Maverick is the best guy to prepare pilots for a top-secret mission — the destruction of a uranium enrichment plant in some snow-covered mountainous region. Fighter jocks need to swoop in, detonate and get the fuck out before enemy missiles and dogfights ensue. You know what’s around the corner.
Remember Luke Skywalker‘s big Death Star challenge at the climax of StarWars: A New Hope? Portions of that classic action sequence are recalled here. Oh, and also like Star Wars, the enemy has no face, only a dark gray helmet…no nationality or ethnicity.
There’s a moment near the end of Top Gun: Maverick when it seems as if the finale of another film about fighter jocks — Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko-Ri (’54) — is being replayed. You’ll recall that it ends with William Holden and Mickey Rooney huddling in a muddy ditch and being killed by North Korean troops. If only the Kosinski-Cruise-Bruckheimer film had gone the distance in this respect.
But the absence of even a shred of wokeness is wonderful. Remember that it’s locked into a mid ‘80s mindset to start with, and that it was written and filmed before the woke thing kicked in bigtime.
Everyone in TopGun: Maverick (even the afflicted Val Kilmer) is attractive — lean, perfectly cut hair, great teeth, fine complexions. Tom Cruise, currently nudging 60 but 56 and 57 during filming, looks like a 48 year old who works out, eats healthily and gets facials. Jennifer Connelly, playing his Maverick character’s 40something girlfriend, has never looked more radiant. Jon Hamm, Ed Harris…all the older dudes have flat abs.
There’s just no room in this well-tended realm for the graying, heavy-set, mid-60ish Kelly McGillis, who played Cruise’s lover, Charlie, in the 1986original. And even if she’d kept herself in shape…let’s not go there. McGillis is fine, she never would’ve made the cut, the producers liked Connelly, let it go.
Posted on 6.9.15: “Nancy Wells, my dear mom, passed Sunday night. She gave me everything — life, love, love of the arts (she turned me on to Peter Tchaikovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, John Updike, Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin…the list is infinite) and particularly love of theatre.
“She was the beating heart and balm of our family — 90% of the joy and spunk and laughter came from her, and she basically saved me and my brother and sister from my father’s alcoholic moodiness when we were young. (Not to diminish my dad’s influence too much — he gave me the writerly urge along with the barbed attitude, such as it is.) But I would have been dead without my mom’s emotional radiance and buoyancy.
“My mom loved show business, plays, films, music. She worked for NBC and BBC in the old days, acted in several plays in New Jersey (including Somserset Vaughn‘s The Constant Wife) and directed two or three plays at the Wilton Playshop. She was partnered in her own real-estate business in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
“She had been gradually slipping away for a couple of years (during my last visit in early May she didn’t even open her eyes). Now, at last, her peace is absolute.”
The sudden eruption of publicly-witnessed female sexuality in the mid ’50s…we get it. The damp, vulgar, pelvic-region kind. Which is why so many thousands of conservative-minded viewers of Elvis Presley‘s first-ever televised performance on The Milton Berle Show (4.3.56) wrote in to say how appalled and even horrified they were.
