Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
September 25, 2024
I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
September 25, 2024
Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
September 25, 2024
The gist of Michelle Pfeiffer‘s complaint is that while bathing in a flush hotel suite she accidentally washed her hair with laundry detergent and used a face-cleanser as a cream rinse. It’s ironic that she’s wearing glasses in this video since the absence of same is the nub of it. The problem is that unless over-45 types take a shower with their glasses on or contact lenses inserted, they can’t read the labels on those stupid little plastic bottles in the shower. It’s that simple. Solution: A braille system — shampoo bottles need to be square, conditioners need to be oval and so on.
Michelle Pfeiffer's Instagram videos remind me of those Jeff Wells posts where he goes "As we all know…" and then says something that absolutely no one on the planet is thinking. pic.twitter.com/dd8ScBJuib
[Around 7:10 mark] “Far-left political correctness is a cancer on progressivism. When you talk to Trump supporters, they are not blind to his myriad flaws, but one thing they always say is ‘[at least] he’s not politically correct.’ I don’t think you can overestimate how much people have been choking on political correctness and hating it. There were two recent studies about this recently, in a N.Y. Times front-page story and in The Atlantic about a year ago. The vast majority of liberals in this country hate it…they think political correctness has gone way too far…no one likes to be living on eggshells.”
Sometime in his mid teens Anton Yelchin was told he had cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that ensured he wouldn’t live past his early 40s and perhaps not even his late 30s. Yelchin understandably hid this information from everyone, but what a thing to live with…good God.
“Few of his costars were aware of his struggles, though dozens of them show up here to sing his praises. Kristen Stewart describes how he ‘kinda broke my heart’ when the two were teenagers. Simon Pegg warmly labels him ‘a little dirt bird’ for his nocturnal photo shoots at Van Nuys sex clubs. And Willem Dafoe recalls commiserating with Yelchin over his anxieties about losing his hair, which, in a profession that strives to project eternal youth, was more than a matter of simple vanity.” [HE interjection: Two or three trips to Prague — problem solved.]
“Directed by Garret Price, Love, Antosha [paints] a touching and surprising portrait of an actor who had much more going on in his life than was mentioned in his obituaries. The Yelchin we see here was a devoted son, an almost fanatically committed actor (he amassed a remarkable 69 acting credits), a blues guitarist, a photographer of lurid fetish clubs, and an intellectually adventurous budding artist who could well have added several more entries to that resume.” — from Andrew Barker’s 9.29.19 Variety review.
I was instantly impressed when I came upon this photo last night. The canary yellow sweater against the greenish tweed jacket, white pants, light blue shirt and black tie. I’m guessing that the shoes are brown with…what, black socks? Or blue-ish gray? It’s perfect. Was Stewart a beau brummell on his own steam or did he have a fashion consultant? I’m guessing this was taken sometime after Destry Rides Again but before The Philadelphia Story.
Michael Wolff six days ago: “I think it gets crazier and crazier…Donald Trump is more isolated, more alone…as we see this dominant personalty, I think this a story of a meltdown, one of the greatest political meltdowns of all time…it ends in tears, Donald Trump‘s tears. Let’s put it this way. I put it to Steve [Bannon]…I referred to the possibility of Trump getting another term and winning re-election, and Steve said ‘stop’.”
Every five years or so I remind everyone that idiosyncratic home-grown commercial storefronts from the old days are as much a vital part of Los Angeles culture as any standard tourist attraction (Hollywood Bowl, movie-star homes in Beverly Hills and Bel Air, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach). And that it’s important to keep them alive and visible.
I’m speaking of the gone-but-not-forgotten Tail of The Pup, which disappeared from its last location (San Vicente and Beverly Blvd.) in 2005. As well as Tower Records, the shuttered Formosa Cafe, the long-defunct Tiny Naylor’s and the permanently closed Irv’s Burgers of West Hollywood.
Tail O’ the Pup was an iconic fast-food stand that was actually shaped like a hot dog. Built in 1946, the small, walk-up stand was noted as a prime example of “mimetic”-type novelty architecture. It was one of the very last surviving mid-20th century buildings that were built in the shapes of the products they sold. The kids and I laughingly agreed in the mid ’90s that Tail of the Pup’s representation of a mustard-lathered dog on a bun looked (I’m sorry) like a bowel movement in progress.
A significant percentage of film critics didn’t realize that Sharon Stone‘s testimony in Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue is fictional. I’ve personally spoken to a pair of top-tier critics who went “the fuck?” when I told them Stone was one of the four hoodwinkers. Notice the seemingly doctored photo of Stone getting Dylan’s autograph during the Rolling Thunder tour, which is used in the doc.
BTW: Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich, with whom I communicated last night, has so far declined to change a line in his review that clearly indicates he thought the Stone story was legit. Toward the end of paragraph #10, Ehrlich mentions “Dylan’s run-ins with a 19-year-old actress named Sharon Stone (sure to be an eyebrow-raising surprise for some viewers).”
Ehrlich didn’t even get the age right. Born on 3.10.58, Stone was 17 when the first leg of the tour was underway. Even if she ran into Dylan during the second leg in the spring of ’76 she would have been 18.
Jon Stewart to Fox News’ Shep Smith: “What we’re saying is, just renew the VCF Fund. There’s no fraud. It runs beautifully. It’s an incredible program. Look, this was war. These are the casualties of war. We can’t stop supporting them because they can no longer serve us. That is not an imaginable outcome for this.”
In King Vidor‘s Man Without A Star, Kirk Douglas‘s “Dempsey Rae” plays a tough, rugged cowboy who doesn’t join, follow or subscribe. Kind of like James Caan‘s character in Thief. Dempsey definitely doesn’t like barbed-wire fences, as scars on his chest suggest. But he’s also a showoff, as this scene with William Campbell confirms.
Dempsey says that fancy gunplay is silly and empty, and yet he’s taken the time to learn how to twirl guns like a Barnum & Bailey performer. That’s because Douglas the movie star didn’t have the character to play a man who truly disdains flashy gunplay and holds back — who values the fundamentals over tricks and technique. He had to dazzle the audience and then say “it’s all bullshit.” That’s how movie stars usually play their cards.
Andrew Slater‘s Echo in the Canyon is a quaalude tablet ** — a mild-mannered, perfectly agreeable tribute to the seminal mid ’60s Laurel Canyon music scene. The focus is mainly upon ’65 (particularly the narrative advanced by Andrew Grant Jackson‘s “1965: The Most Revolutionary Year In Music“) and how The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Mamas and the Papas and The Beach Boys introduced spiritual depth and poetry to pop music playlists, which up until that moment had been mostly on the level of “Hang On, Sloopy.”
The film also follows the musical innovations and advancements of ’66, but stops before the onset of early ’67 flower power. Yes, Joni Mitchell is strongly identified with Laurel Canyon, but she didn’t move into her little house on Lookout Drive until the spring of ’68, and so she doesn’t fit into the timeline. I don’t know why Slater ignores Judy Collins but he does.
Slater doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t know (especially if you’ve read the Jackson book) but the film is fine. With Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan as a kind of host-guide, the doc glides and grooves along and gives the legend a nice neck massage. The ’65 and ’66 Laurel Canyon scene was the same kind of creative hotbed that Paris was for writers in the ’20s, New York City of the late ’40s and ’50s was for abstract impressionists and Australia was for native filmmakers in the late ’70s and ’80s. The critical reaction has been positive, and deservedly so.
Bob Strauss said last night that Dylan and his “youngster” bandmates “try” to play classic mid ’60s songs in the doc. To which I replied that “they do a bang-up job with the Mamas and Papas ‘Go Where You Wanna Go.'”
To my mind the only serious problem with Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue doc is that he includes four phony talking heads among several real ones, and thereby violates the trustworthiness that we all associate with the documentary form, and for a reason that strikes me as fanciful and bogus.
The doc acquaints us with 22 or more talking-head veterans of the tour (Dylan included) but among this fraternity Scorsese inserts what Toronto Star critic Peter Howell is calling the “four fakers” — made-up characters portrayed by real, recognizable people:
Sharon Stone, who was 17 when the Rolling Thunder Tour was underway, seems to be speaking as herself but she’s actually “playing” The Beauty Queen. At first Michael Murphy seems to be speaking from his own perspective, but then you realize he’s playing The Politician. Actor-performer Martin von Haselberg (the husband of Bette Midler) plays The Filmmaker. And Paramount chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos portrays The Promoter.
Some of what they say to the camera might be factually correct in this or that anecdotal way, but it’s all basically bullshit — made-up, written-out or improvised recollections that are performed for a chuckle, for the hell of it.
Scorsese explains his decision to include the four fakers in the press notes: “I wanted the picture to be a magic trick. Magic is the nature of film. There’s an element to the tour that has a sense of fun to it…doing something to the audience. You don’t make it predictable. There’s a great deal of sleight of hand.”
In response to which I said to myself “WHAT?” Who says RTR was driven by a sleight-of-hand, put-on mentality? I never heard that before. I thought it was about keeping it real, small-scale, people-level, driving around in a small tour bus, passing out pamphlets, etc.
Exasperated, I wrote an email to Howell, who actually attended an RTR concert in Canada at age 19 and reviewed the concert for a Toronto daily.
Wells to Howell: “Did you feel that the RTR show you witnessed was ‘a magic trick…[with] an element to the tour that has a sense of fun to it…doing something to the audience, unpredictable, sleight of hand,” etc.? What the fuck is Scorsese talking about, ‘sleight of hand’? What the fuck does that actually mean? Sounds like gibberish to me.”
Howell to Wells: “It’s total gibberish. What annoys me about this, actually depresses me, is that the Rolling Thunder Revue wasn’t some kind of scam or magical stunt by Dylan. I was there. I saw the show. I read all the reviews and interviews. It was seen at the time as a sincere attempt by Dylan to get back to his musical roots, as an antidote to the giant stadium tour of the year before. He seemed to believe this. Dylan says in the film the RTR wasn’t a moneymaker, just a great musical event with the sideshow altruism of trying to free Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter from an unjust jailing.
“That’s how I took it in at the time. Sad to think that Dylan and Scorsese are now making it out to be a colossal con job to show how cool they are and to keep the fans guessing. Remember when we thought of Dylan as the real deal, a guy who would speak truth to power? Now he seems determined to convince everybody that he never really meant or cared about most of what he did and sang about.