Day Late, Dollar Short

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“Anyone who posts a video of herself crying and posts it to the internet should be disregarded and ignored automatically” — agreed.

I didn’t know what to do or say when Selena Gomez‘s weeping video hit a couple of days ago (i,e, sometime on Monday), although I did know right away that she/it pushed too way hard.

Plus it struck me as a tad ungenuine for an actress who “grew up speaking Spanish but lost her fluency around the same time she began her Hollywood career as a kid“, and was therefore obliged to “spend months relearning the language for her Emilia Perez role as the trophy wife of a Mexican cartel boss.”

Space-Time Continuum

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42 and 1/2 years ago I interviewed this famous, emotionally emphatic 50 year-old woman for an Us magazine interview to promote E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. She was 7 years old at the time, and now she’s on the fucking cover of AARP’s print publication.

I feel like I’m on a time toboggan, and it’s going faster and faster.

Out Of Their Heads

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Industry friendo: “So why is it so hard to find any AMPAS members, whom I speak with from time to time. who don’t love Emilia Perez? Riddle me that, big boy.”

HE to industry friendo: “I don’t want to sound cruel, but the evidence (including your own testimony) indicates that they’re simply lacking in taste, or the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. I wouldn’t want to call them rubes, but that’s what they more or less seem to be.  

“This is proven by the fact that even in 2025, they’re STILL in thrall to kneejerk wokeism. I sympathize with wanting to tell Trump to shove it, but they’re slitting the Academy’s (and indirectly Hollywood’s) own throat by celebrating a far-fetched, bordering-on-ludicrous, trans-identity musical that 75% of the Joe and Jane Popcorn RT community doesn’t care for very much, and which is pretty much hated in Mexico.  

“To repeat an old phrase, they’re committing cultural suicide.  This is why so many popcorn megaplexers think Academy members have lost their minds. On a raft and heading for Niagara Falls…

“The Academy has to wake up, smell the coffee and stop giving Oscars to woke instructionals that celebrate this or that identity cause. Joe and Jane have have had it up to here with this crap. Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave…step back from the insanity brink and embrace the crafty good stuff that is blessedly free of ideology. Okay, two out of three.”

Ready Or Not, Here We Go Again

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I felt a certain degree of excitement about the original Richard Donner Superman reboot (‘78) and even the gradually declining early ‘80s sequels. And I’ll admit to feeling a vague revival of this when Bryan Singer‘s Superman Returns came along in ‘06.

But Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel shat the bed, I felt — it was covered in gloom sauce, and left me with a splitting headache. Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (‘16) really put a nail in it.

And now James Gunn has directed and delivered still another one, God in heaven, and is calling it just plain old Superman. I suppose we should all be thankful that David Corenswet‘s Clark Kent / Supie hasn’t been re-imagined as trans. (Corenswet, 31, is straight and married.)

Where does Gunn get the chutzpah to drag out Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) yet again? Where is the shame? How can Gunn glance at himself in the bathroom mirror?

For What It’s Worth, HE Empathizes With Team Baldoni

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During the scriptwriting or script-polishing phase of It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni really went to town — emotionally, therapeutically, performance-wise — as he kissed Blake Lively‘s ass in a phone message. 2 am, six minutes and 49 seconds — “I am so sorry…sorry that you went through what you went though…you’re the secret sauce.”

Words of Conviction

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From Echo Chamberlain‘s “Emilia Perez: Woke Trainwreck with 13 Oscar Nominations“:

“Musicals can be great when they’re, you know, designed to be musicals. But [Mexico’s] real-life narco culture context is gritty and unsparing — death, incarceration, brutality, gothic violence and despair. And Emilia Perez having that as a template from which there springs forth musical numbers is mind-blowingly absurd.”

“And You’re Vain and Selfish”

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Roughly three weeks until the 2.16 debut of Season 3 of The White Lotus…creator Mike White once again exploring the shallowness, self-absorption and occasional venality of a crew of wealthy tourists on holiday, this time in Thailand and more particularly Ko Samui — a sizable-but-not-huge island to the east of the southern Thai peninsula (i.e., Gulf of Thailand).

Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins (miserable), Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam (son of Alessandro) Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey (shallowest of all?), Natasha Rothwell, Patrick (son of Arnold) Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong and Aimee Lou Wood.

How many will die?

Wiki page: “Until the late 20th century, Ko Samui was an isolated, self-sufficient community, having little connection with the mainland of Thailand. The island was without roads until the early 1970s and the 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) journey from one side of the island to the other could involve a whole-day trek through the mountainous central jungles.

“Ko Samui’s economy now is based primarily on a successful tourist industry, as well as exports of coconut and rubber. Economic growth has brought not only prosperity but also major changes to the island’s environment and culture.”