I’d somehow never seen this local ABC News video report. Curious as this sounds, watching it whooshed me back not just to a singular dark moment but to a long-ago neverland, 40 years before the sudden double-whammy nightmare of COVID and totalitarian woke terror…I would have that monocultural, pre-culture war time again…a time when the … Read more
Last night I sat through James Vanderbilt‘s Nuremberg, all 148 minutes’ worth. It was a 10:15 pm show, and within 10 minutes I’d begun surfing and texting out of boredom. I was semi-flabbergasted by how rote and so-whatty it all felt. I was riveted by Vanderbilt’s writing and direction of Truth ten years ago but … Read more
Part One of Alex Gibney‘s Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos is pretty much what I expected — a smooth, hugely enjoyable, inside-baseball chronicle of the life of David Chase (from his New Jersey childhood beginnings and an acrimonious relatonship with a difficult mom, all the way to the debut of The Sopranos in … Read more
“But that we loved our country and especially protecting our democracy from the whims of an authoritarian sociopath more.” — James Mason‘s Brutus in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar (’53). Olbermann: “I am suggesting that the events of the last 24 hours” — particularly Puck’s Peter Hamby reporting that a confidential OpenLabs “polling memo” spells … Read more
HE is thumbs–up on Uri Berliner’s 4.9 Free Press essay about how NPR’s entrenched liberal dogma and orthodoxy led to a pattern of eating its own tail when Donald Trump came to power. Most of the article tells the straight dope. NPR’s ideological and institutional opposition to a flood of aggressive Trump malignancies over the … Read more
I don’t hate my VW Passat (love the sound system, the shiny black color) but I’m starting to grow truly weary of the constant problems. It won’t stop costing me more and more money for repairs (labor, parts). The latest migraine is a leak in the heater core, which warms up the car interior. This … Read more
…to the version that began to peek out 20 years ago…Birth (’04), Under the Skin (’13) and The Zone of Interest (’23). Eight days ago my heart sank when it was announced that Justin Chang, a Millennial wokester with a particular focus on ethnic representation, will be elbowing aside New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, a … Read more
Last night The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield posted a strong contrarian view of the whole Olivia Wilde-Florence Pugh-Harry Styles-Shia Labeouf + Move Over Darling contretemps. Titled “Trades Gone Wilde,” Rushfield basically adopts a woke/#MeToo posture by accusing Variety and others of a semblance of old-school sexism by giving Wilde a much harder time than they would … Read more
This afternoon I finally saw Sarah Polley‘s Women Talking, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It’s not a “bad” film — just interminable. And yet it’s a well-written, well-acted dialogue piece about eight Mennonite women (plus the wimpy Ben Whishaw) discussing whether to leave their community because of years of suffering sexual violence from … Read more
On or about 5.20 Cannes Film Festival honcho Thierry Fremaux promised that a “planetary blockbuster” would premiere during the 2021 Cote d’Azur gathering (7.6 through 7.17). The presumption or at least the hope, given Cannes’ rep for (mostly) semi-classy selections, was that the secret film might be the latest Bonder, No Time To Die. Or … Read more
12.8.20 will be the 40th anniversary of John Lennon‘s murder. I’ve written about this four or five times, but how can I ignore the 40th? How can I not go there? I was in London, waking up on a couch in Stockwell, when I heard the news. I was there to do a Gentleman’s Quarterly … Read more
My first viewing of Wim Wenders‘ The American Friend was at the 1977 New York Film Festival, or sometime in late September of that year. Simultaneously bleak and haunting, a moody European noir, wry and cool and even sexy at times, it connects you with every existential dark-night-of-the-soul phase you’ve ever tasted first-hand in your … Read more