The voice of top Ukraine diplomat William B. Taylor, who this morning provided compelling testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on the opening day of impeachment hearings, has great snap and timbre. He speaks with crisp diction and an excellent phrasing instinct. One is concurrently left with an impression that Taylor is a man of character and conviction, and is therefore trustworthy.

But I don’t get the Walter Cronkite analogy. Okay, their voices are vaguely similar. What people are really saying, I suspect, is that Taylor sounded as polished and well-spoken and generally convincing as Cronkite did for decades on the CBS Evening News.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza: “William B. Taylor, the top US official in Ukraine, delivered a tour-de-force opening statement — packed with details about the formation of an “irregular” channel (led by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani) with Ukraine that often ran directly counter to his own regular channel and longstanding US policy in the region.

“Taylor also laid out an excruciatingly specific timeline of his interactions with, among others, National Security Adviser John Bolton, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and top Ukrainian officials. In that timeline, he repeatedly made clear that there was a not-very-quiet understanding that military aid from the US to Ukraine was being withheld unless and until the country announced an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, sat on the board.

“Most stunningly, Taylor recounted an episode that he was told about only after his September 22 closed-door testimony involving Sondland. According to Taylor, Sondland met with a top aide to Zelensky on July 26 — one day after the fateful call between Trump and Zelensky. Sondland then called Trump and informed him of the nature of the meeting and an aide to Taylor heard Trump ask of “the investigations.” Following that call, the Taylor aide asked Sondland what Trump’s thoughts were on Ukraine. Sondland replied that Trump cares more about the Biden investigation than anything else.”

The view of Jordan Searles’ N.Y. Times op-ed piece about Marriage Story (11.12) is that Robert Benton‘s Kramer vs. Kramer, to which Noah Baumbach‘s film has been compared, presents a more progressive view of how a responsibility-accepting husband-father (i.e, Dustin Hoffman‘s Ted Kramer) should behave.

Her opinion is basically that Baumbach favors Adam Driver‘s less-apologetic Charlie Barber character over Scarlett Johansson‘s Nicole Barber.

Excerpt: “Baumbach casts Laura Dern‘s point of view in a harsh light, with her feminist speeches framed like villain monologues. In the last act of the film, Nora announces that she cut a deal with Charlie’s lawyers that gives Nicole custody 55 percent of the time whenever Charlie is visiting Los Angeles. ‘I didn’t want him to be able to say he got 50-50,’ she says, gloating.

“Even though Marriage Story is ostensibly on Nicole’s side, she isn’t given the same sympathy-churning emotional beats afforded to her ex-husband. Charlie never apologizes for his behavior, though he does perform ‘Being Alive,’ from the Stephen Sondheim musical Company. In the show, the song finds the lead character at first rejecting commitment, but soon realizing that everything that makes a relationship challenging can also be fulfilling. Mr. Driver’s performance of the song is stirring, but its context feels unearned.”

HE to critic pally: “Are you sensing a shifting of the winds on Marriage Story?” Critic pally to HE: “Totally. It’s being taken down by the wokesters, and by the fact that it’s gone into the Netflix Bermuda Triangle.”

I ran a “Marriage v. Kramer” piece on 9.3.19.

Hollywood Elsewhere sincerely apologizes for missing last night’s all-media screening of Elizabeth Banks‘ Charlie’s Angels. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it…okay, maybe it is that. Maybe I subconsciously “forgot” for this reason.

Rotten Tomatoes 61% + Metacritic 56% = forget it.

“The movie is relentless, pulpy and exciting, unabashedly derivative, and — at an hour and 58 minutes — a little too much of a rousingly of-the-moment feministic but still rather standard-issue thing.

“The new Charlie’s Angels is a heavier chunk of escape than any previous Angels incarnation — if the early–2000s films were pop, this one is metal.” — from Owen Gleiberman’s apparently gently phrased review.

Heroic Hollywood: “While speaking to SBIFF Cinema Society, Joker director Todd Phillips explained that there were a few scenes that he had to cut, the most notable of which was a scene had Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck doing something bizarre while inside a bathtub.

“Phillips didn’t explain what this was exactly, but it seems as though the scene in question was meant to be highly disturbing.

“Usually, when a hard-R movie has to have a scene cut from the theatrical release in order to get MPAA approval, it’s because the scene in question is deemed pornographic. However, Phillips suggested that the scene that was removed is not sexually explicit in nature, but is simply too bizarre for a standard R-rated movie to handle.”

Why not just spill it?

John Sebastian + the MonaLisa Twins bonded a little more than two years ago. It only took me 7 and 1/2 months to catch up with this “Make Up Your Mind” video. Apart from the fact that Sebastian is 50 years older than he was at the time of the ’69 Woodstock Festival, what’s the main takeaway? The fact that his voice has dropped a few octaves, and he can no longer sing this 1966 tune in G major.

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For the first time in the 2019 campaign, Mayor Pete is ahead of the other Democratic contenders (Typewriter Joe, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) in a poll about the forthcoming, all-important Iowa caucus. A Monmouth University Poll shows Buttigieg leading with 22%, followed by Joe Biden at 19%, Sen. Warren at 18%, and Sen. Sanders with 13%….it’s over, Bernie! This is the first time that the South Bend mayor has come in first in any poll. Biden and Warren’s numbers are within the margin of error, but Buttigieg has nonetheless risen 14 points since Monmouth’s August poll.

I can’t shake this awful premonition (which is backed up by polling data) that hinterland bumblefucks will mostly lean against Elizabeth Warren and go with the devil they know, and out of this Donald Trump may once again pull off an electoral college victory despite losing the popular vote. Bernie Sanders has his devotional following, but no path to the Democratic nomination.

The only candidates who could save us from a Warren loss are (a) Typewriter Joe, who’s been slipping in the polls and excites no one outside of retirement-age whites and mainstream African Americans, and (b) Pete Buttigieg, the only formidable Democratic contender who’s below retirement age and radiates a combination of intelligent practicality and X-factor excitement (but who faces a stiff uphill situation with African-American homophobes).

So Typewriter Joe is the only thing standing between the urban and suburban, reasonably well-educated, non-bumblefuck electorate and four more horrific years of The Beast. Joe is polling way ahead of Trump, which is obviously a comfort. But he’s a holdover, a withered brand, past his prime and so not the guy to run things in the 2020s. Better than Trump, of course, but if you set aside the decency factor and the practical-liberal approach to governing you’re left with a guy who’s repeatedly signalled that biology is tapping on his shoulder and who’ll be 82 when his first term ends.

Which is why I wrote yesterday that “I feel as if we’re all in the middle of this vaguely depressing, increasingly terrifying, extremely slow-motion political nightmare.”

Chris Evans: “I think original content inspires creative content. I think new stuff is what keeps the creative wheel rolling.”

HE: In what way is churning out Marvel and D.C. franchise movies…in what realm could anyone define the content of Marvel and D.C. movies as “new stuff” or “original content”? Okay, Joker is different — definitely not franchise sausage. But otherwise, franchise movies are the opposite of “new” or “fresh.”

Evans: “I just believe there’s room at the table for all of it.”

HE: But there isn’t. Not at the theatrical table. Scorsese’s point was that Marvel and D.C. have comic-booked and primitivized everything down, and in so doing elbowed aside nearly all other forms of content outside of family fare and romcoms. Obviously not on streaming platforms or cable/broadcast, but in theatres.

Evans: “It’s like saying a certain type of music isn’t music. Who are you to say that?”

HE: Scorsese isn’t saying that Marvel/D.C. isn’t music — he’s saying it isn’t especially good music, that it isn’t very adventurous or intimate or exploratory or inventive, that all superhero franchise flicks do the same kind of thing over and over again.

Oh, and Evans? Who are you to suggest that our greatest living filmmaker needs to check his ego and re-think things a bit?

Here’s a basic view shared by certain people I know. I’m not arguing this perception. Anyone who’s reached the age of 14 or 15 without realizing the truth of it is suffering from some kind of blockage. But I abhor the manner and tendencies of those who live and act and behave by this view alone. For they are the dark fellows, the reactionaries, the weak sisters, the conservatives, the fearful, the militant Israelis and Ebenezer Scrooge‘s of this realm.

Name the film this is from — the film, the year, actors, the original author, etc.

Well-heeled types pay to have their way in a fantasy realm, but it turns out the fantasy realm wants to have its way with them.

Jeff Wadlow‘s Fantasy Island (Sony, 2.14.20) is some kind of high-concept midrange spooker. Boiled down, it seems to be a blend of Michael Crichton’s 1973 Westworld and a 1964 Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode called “Thanatos Palace Hotel“, which costarred Steven Hill and Angie Dickinson. Or something like that.

Co-written by Wadlow, Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs, the newbie costars Michael Pena, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Portia Doubleday, Jimmy O. Yang, Parisa Fitz-Henley and Michael Rooker.

There’s something about the sound of the word “fantasy” when pronounced by a person of Latin heritage (“phahntissy”) that drives me up the wall. I never the use the term “fantasy” except in a derogatory sense.

When I heard Woody Harrelson was playing Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander-in-chief, US Pacific Fleet) in Roland Emmerich‘s Midway, I immediately decided that image-wise he was too stoned for this.

I don’t know if Harrelson is turning on these days like he used to, but his manner is too whimsical and lackadaisical and shit-kicky to play a man of starched-white discipline and great military power. I don’t care how good his performance is — he can’t be Chester Nimitz and that’s final.

I didn’t buy him as Lyndon Johnson either.

Did I attend any Midway screenings? No. Do I want to see it now? No. Will I at least stream it down the road? Possibly but no promises.

You know what I haven’t seen but would like to catch before it gets kicked out of theatres? Dr. Sleep. And I want to catch The Irishman one more time in a theatre before it goes to streaming on 11.27.

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