Nutso-Adjacent Parental Spillage
November 17, 2024
When I Heard Conan O'Brien Would Be Hosting The Oscars
November 17, 2024
Bad Grandpa
November 16, 2024
According to a Ripley transcript, Dickie Greenleaf’s spacious Rome apartment (the one Tom Ripley moves into after he kills Dickie off the coast of San Remo) is located at via di Monserrato, 34. Which is “my” street, so to speak, and a relatively recent memory.
Following the 2017 Cannes Film Festival Tatiana and I visited Venice, Tuscany (RaddainChianti) and Rome, and then, during our last couple of days, drove north to La Spezia to have lunch with Luca Guadagnino.
During our three days in Rome we stayed just down the street from Dickie’s place at via di Monserrrato, 154, a Palazzo Farnese historical building which is only a block of so from Pier Luigi, the city’s greatest seafood restaurant and among the greatest worldwide.
“Yes, you can move too far left. And when you do, you wind up pushing people in the center to the right. At its worst, Canada is what American voters think happens when there’s no one putting a check on extreme wokeness.
“Like the saga of American shop teacher Kayla Lemieux, whose pronouns are she, her and those. Kayla is now back to being a guy, but two years ago when ‘they’ showed up to teach children, the [Halton District School Board] said they were committed to a safe environment. Safe for who? What about the children?
“There was once a weirdo movie producer in the ’60s named Russ Meyer, who made low-budget B movies like Faster Pussycat…Kill! Kill! and Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, all featuring [big-boobed women]. His movies played in porn houses, and were featured in Hustler and Playboy, but who says ‘when it comes to huge ridiculous tits, let’s save that for the kids’?
“And this is why people vote for Trump.
“They say in politics that liberals are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes, and I’m generally with the gas pedal…but not if we’re driving off a cliff.”
William Shatner turned 93 on 3.22.24, and he looks pretty good. I'm wondering if he's entered that really old guy phase when the natural thing is to appear leaner or at least lose that inflated-beach-ball face, which Shatner had for many years. It's relatively rare to see guys with inflated beach ball faces in their 90s.
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...finally stands up and says it. I understand director Alex Garland and A24 spewing the bullshit about how Civil War is actually a tribute to brave journalism -- they don't want to alienate red-state audiences -- but a majority of critics saying the same thing or pretending that the film to is too vague to get a handle on....that's just denial and cowardism.
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In his 11.19.80 review of Michael Cimino‘s Heaven’s Gate, N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby wrote that the film “fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect.”
I’m not saying that Satan arranged for Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite to win the 2019 Best Picture Oscar, but it does seem as if some kind of some kind of reverse karma invaded BJH during the writing or filming of Mickey 17.
No distributor opens a film by an Oscar-winning director in late January, and if they do it’s close to a guarantee that there’s something very, very wrong.
The word on Mickey 17 hasn’t been good since it was announced on 2.20.24 that Warner Bros. had decided to release it on 1.31.25.
And now some Mickey 17 preview footage has been shown at Cinemacon, and Jeff Sneider smells a tank.
Sneider: “The trailer is set to ‘Ain’t That A Kick In The Head’, and what a kick in the head it is, playing out like a comedic version of Edge of Tomorrow with Pattinson’s Mickey dying over and over in service of some larger mission. Until, I guess, Mickey 18 wakes up to find that Mickey 17 never died…or something…giving us twice the #PattinsonPower.
“Yes, the star of The Batman plays dual roles here, but you won’t be talking about seeing double after this trailer. No, you’ll be talking about Pattinson’s [Joe Pesci-like] voice, which is…a choice. A bad one. How could Bong have allowed Pattinson to do that voice?”
I knew that Bong was part baloney — a sloppy scenarist — after watching that notorious Parasite scene in in which the drunken con artist mom lets the fired maid into the house during a huge rainstorm. That scene injected a kind of virus into BJH’s bloodstream, I believe, and now he’s paying the piper.
I awoke at 4 am this morning and needed a bit more shut-eye, so I returned to slumberland around 8:30 am. A half-hour later I was awakened…”aaggh, the fuck?” Luna was napping next to me in bed, her ass less than 15 inches away. She’d more or less farted in my face.
Will dudes shrug at Wicked costars Ariana Grande and Cynthia “witchy greenskin” Erivo and thereby bring about a somewhat muted reception?
FilingfromCinemacon, Jeff Sneider isn’t predicting a shortfall — he’s just saying Wicked (Universal, 11.27) is no Barbie.
Sneider’squote: “I struggle to see menshowingupindroves for this movie.”
At least Sneider’s gender generalization was about XY and not double-X. For if he had posted a gut hunch about potential female responses to Jon Chu’s two-part musical fantasy, he might have been clubbed, stabbed, skinned and all but decapitated.
That’s what happened to me eight and a half years ago when I posted fourbadwords about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s TheRevenant — “Forget women seeing this.” Never generalize about any gender in any context!
HE regretfully notes that Hillary Sharyn Marks Strauss, wife of veteran critic and HE comment-thread regular Bob Strauss, has passed on. Hillary and Bob were married for 35 years (i.e., hitched in ‘89). I knew and quite liked Hillary socially for a good portion of that union, and am very sorry she’s left us all too soon.
On her own creative steam Eleanor is best known for having shot George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s masterful Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a saga of ApocalypseNow — arguably the best making-of-a-famous-movie doc ever made.
Wiki excerpt: “The documentary was begun by Eleanor, who also narrates the behind-the-scenes footage. Coppola turned her material over to Hickenlooper and Bahr in 1990. The pair subsequently shot fresh interviews with the original cast and crew, and then intercut them with Coppola’s footage.
“Hickenlooper and Bahr premiered Hearts at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.”
On Friday afternoon (4.12), HE chatted with entertainment critic, on-air host, podcaster and movie maven Neil Rosen (“Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen“), comedian, critic, podcaster and East Hampton go-to guy Bill McCuddy for a nice Zoom encounter.
The principal topics were Alex Garland’s just-opened Civil War, Steve Zallian’s delectable eight-part Ripley and Charlie Sadoff’s Against All Enemies.
I started to pass along the story behind HE’sGoFundMe Cannesreach–out (i.e., the happiest story of my recent life), but McCuddy smirked and changedthesubject.
McCuddy also swears Monkey Man (aka MonkeyWick) is a better bloodbath–revengeflick than one might initially expect. I watched the last 20 minutes’ worth two nights ago…effort appreciated but no thanks.
Right now I'm leaning more toward Clapton than Guadagnino, but perceptions can change very quickly. There's a NYC screening on Monday evening (4.15).
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