Son of Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
With Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain finally playing commercially or at least about to open in suburban locations, here’s a refresher of my 9.25.24 Telluride review:
Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain (Searchlight, 11.1), a quirky, shifty dudes-travelling-through-Poland thing, is going to connect because of Kieran Culkin‘s richly eccentric and occasionally unhinged character, Benji Kaplan…one of those hyper, live-wire guys whose irreverent, unfiltered energy most of us can’t help but enjoy or even get off on in short bursts.
But Culkin’s stoned-jumping-bean manner is also a bit much after repeated exposures. And knowing that Benji is doomed to some kind of arduous instability later in life…a poet who’s fated to “die in the gutter,” as Bob Dylan might put it…Benji is, of course, quite sad.
Everyone has encountered a Benji or two in their life, and this is the film’s big irresistable draw. A Real Pain has to be seen for the Culkin effect. I had heard quite a lot about his firecracker turn, and yet Culkin didn’t disappoint in the least. God, what an amazing, infectious asshole…love his shpiel! And I adore the fact that he loves to sit in airline terminals and study the travellers.
Pic is basically about a pair of tristate-area Jewish cousins, crazy Benji and anxious, straightlaced, somewhat dull David (Eisenberg, who is strangely being campaigned for Best Actor with Culkin going for a Best Supporting nom) embarked on a group holocaust tour in Poland. The usual intrigues and complications ensue.
On top of which Dirty Dancing‘s Jennifer Grey, 63 years young when the film was shot in mid ’23, is also a participant. (The others are like lumps of mashed potatoes.)
This, trust me, is an excellent trailer:
Costas Knows All, Sees All
Bob Costas on LeBatardShow three days ago: “Kamala Harris is not an ideal [presidential] candidate, and [she] may have to grow into the job if she wins it. But this is not a political question — it’a a moral question, and it would be [this] no matter who opposes Donald Trump.
“There is nothing wrong with being a Republican or a conservative. Nothing wrong with that. I read George Will on a regular basis, and Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. I’m like Bill Maher. I’m a center-left guy, a classic liberal, who is troubled by the distortions of [woke] leftism, which is different than liberalism, and some of that is an anchor around Kamala Harris’s neck now. Because she can’t distance herself from the worst of it, even if she doesn’t fully embrace it. Over the years excessive [voices] on the left have handed Fox News their talking points on a silver platter. Or, in this case, the Trump candidacy points.
“So I can understand people having serious misgivings about Biden’s record, and about how the Dems kinda gaslit the public about Biden’s fitness, both as a candidate and [his ability to handle] a second term as president. There are some policies that can’t be defended. You cannot defend what has gone on for a long time at the [Mexican] border. You can certainly defend attempts to reform the police and the justice system, which has historically been tilted against African Americans and other people of color.
“[But] the Trump candidacy is about a man who is a liar, a lunatic and an ignoramus. So it’s a moral question such as we have never seen, not in my lifetime and maybe ever…a presidential candidate with so many of those who are rock-solid Republicans and conservatives, and who worked closely with him and whose credibilty and credentials cannot be questioned…all of these [veterans of the 2017 to 2021 Trump administration] saying the same word — unfit. He is unfit to hold any position of public trust, let alone the presidency.
“So there are millions of people who may have misgivings about aspects of Kamala Harris’s candidacy, but at the same time cannot stomach the idea that somebody whose entire being is antithetical to actual patriotism, to American principles, to common sense and common decency…that, to me, is the deciding factor.”
Lame Flatliner, Total Bust
I’d like to say something positive about Robert Zemeckis’ Here (Sony, 11.1), a bizarrely stilted adaptation of Richard McGuire’s 1989 graphic novel, and it’s this: the de-aging of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, accomplished through Metaphysic Live, is much, much better than the de-aging of Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci in The Irishman. Serious points for this.
But if you’re going to focus primarily on a location — a living room in a suburban New Jersey home — and secondarily its various residents over the span of roughly 100 years (early 1900s to early 21st Century), which is basically an Our Town-ish concept (people come and go but the relentless, ever-expanding scheme of life pushes on), I think it’s a really, really bad idea to lock your camera into a single, static unmovable shot. I know…that’s the bravery aspect but it’s tedious all the same.
The nicest thing you can say about Here is that it’s an ambitious concept, although it would’ve worked better on-stage.
Who cares about dinosaurs stomping around millions of years earlier? Nobody. And William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, radiates the same indifference.
Zemeckis shows a young, attractive Native American couple making out in the 1700s and a black family moving into the home in the 1980s or ‘90s because woke Hollywood rules demand diversity.
Would a typical American family on February 9th 1964…would they have had their black-and-white TV tuned to The Ed Sullivan Show and the debut performance of The Beatles in particular but ignore this because of some domestic issue they happened to be focusing on?
The Dean Martin Show (‘65 to ‘74) was broadcast in color so you can’t show it playing in the same family’s living room in black-and-white. It just wasn’t a black-and-white show…c’mon.
Due respect to the Forrest Gump gang (Zemeckis, Hanks, Wright, screenwriter Eric Roth, dp Don Burgess) for having given Here the old college try, but it’s one of the most shoulder-shrugging, close-to- embarrassing “who cares?” flicks I’ve ever seen.
It should’ve been a play.
Special, Only-in-Wilton Fall Leaves
Snapped at 8:16 am, 11.3.24.
Last Significant Boomer Nostalgia Flick?
In a fair and just world James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (Searchlight, 12.25) would just be a film and that’s all…an experience to be judged and savored and possibly enjoyed according to how good it is, period..,how straight and true and honest it feels on a no-bullshit, deep-down, character-driven basis.
But of course it won’t be processed that way.
For Mangold and Jay Cocks’ Bob Dylan biopic is arriving at the tail end of the boomer nostalgia era, which arguably began 41 years ago with Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (‘83) and peaked with Robert Zemeckis ‘ Forrest Gump (‘94).
HE commenter Eddie Ginley posted this yesterday:
Throw in Zemeckis’ Here (Sony, 11.1) and the forthcoming Jeremy Allen White-Bruce Springsteen biopic and you have to admit that the hour has probably come for boomer sagas and sentimentalists to give it a rest and sorta kinda go away…to hand the mythological movie torch to GenXers and even, God forbid, Millennials, some of whom who are now in their early 40s and are probably nurturing sentimental looking-back notions of their own (i.e., Eminem, Korn, Limp Bizkit).
A friend insisted this morning that no matter how crafty or admirably well-written or emotionally affecting or compellingly performed A Complete Unknown turns out to be, the younger Academy members and particularly the mutants who adored Parasite and Everything Everywhere All At Once are too dug into their boomer hatred, which is why Steven Spielberg’s The Post was blown off.
If a generational yardstick has to be used, a fair way to frame A Complete Unknown would be as the last noteworthy boomer flick…the last ambitious ‘60s atmosphere film….an auld lang syne to the pot and protest and sexual revolution generation (nookie from the late ‘60s to early ‘80s was really and truly astounding) in the same way that Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers and The Fog of War were seen as farewell-to-the-greatest-generation movies.
An “Uh-Oh” Moment for Karla Sofia Gascon
She’ll be Best Actress-nominated, of course, but in the blink of an eyelash our tectonic plates have shifted and…wait, what’s happening?…identity campaigns are no longer a compelling poker hand.
Or so says an 11.2 N.Y. Times article by Jeremy W. Peters and “Identity Trap” author Yascha Mounk in particular.
If you ask me Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress Oscar vote earlier this year to Poor Things’ Emma Stone was an early indication of this cultural-turning-the-road thang.
Eat shit, wokesters!
What’s In A Striking Face?
Fascination, intrigue, recognition, emotional alignment, spiritual uplift, a reflection of a cultural-political era, etc.
HE to Domingo: Kim Never Did Nasty with Sammy
Late to this but bear with me: Colman Domingo will reportedly make his feature directorial debut with Scandalous, a late 1950s period drama about an alleged romance between Kim Novak (Picnic, Vertigo, Bell Book & Candle) and singer-dancer Sammy Davis Jr., and the brutal, bigoted intimidation (Harry Cohn, Johnny Roselli, Mickey Cohen) that the pair faced once their relationship made the gossip columns.
Sydney Sweeney and David Jonsson are “in talks” to play Novak and Davis.
Just one problem: In March ’21 Novak told THR‘s Scott Feinberg that she and Davis never actually got down. Davis had the hots for Novak and certainly pursued her, an effort that resulted in at least one special date when Novak attended a Thankgiving dinner at the home of Davis’s parents, followed by Davis paying an impromptu visit to Novak’s family home in Chicago a few weeks later.
But there was never an “affair” to speak of…no sliding salami action, no D.H. Lawrence-level passion, no heavy breathing, no splendor in the grass, no making out in the car…nothin’.
Why would Novak, now 91, lie to Feinberg? In 2021 the Davis boogaloo had happened 64 years earlier.
Novak told Feinberg, in fact, that Davis may have done a Bill Cosby on her (i.e., fucked her while she was unconscious) after Tony Curtis, a close Davis pal, slipped her a Mickey Finn.
Davis was pressured by Columbia honcho Harry Cohn, or more specifically by mobsters Johnny Roselli and Mickey Cohen at Cohn’s request. Wiki excerpt: “The one-eyed Davis was threatened with the loss of his other eye or a broken leg if he did not marry a black woman within two days. Davis sought the protection of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, who said that he could protect him in Chicago and Las Vegas but not California.”
In 1960 Davis and actress May Britt (still with us at age 90) not only had an actual interacial affair but got married. Like Jim Brown, Sammy obviously had a thing for white women.
Britt’s and Davis’s late daughter Tracey Davis (’61 to ’20) alleged in a 2014 book that the marriage to Britt resulted in President Kennedy‘s staff refusing to allow Davis to perform at JFK’s 1961 inauguration. The snub was confirmed by director Sam Pollard, who revealed in a 2017 American Masters documentary that Davis’s invitation to perform at the inauguration was abruptly canceled on the night of JFK’s inaugural party.
Davis and Britt divorced in 1968 after Davis admitted to an affair with singer Lola Falana.
And then, of course, Davis hugged Richard Nixon on the Republican National Convention stage in 1972.
I chatted with Davis at a late-night party in 1983. No charm or smiles, dark mood, not a happy camper.