“Babygirl” Peek-Out at CAA

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A couple of days ago a friend attended an early-bird screening of Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl (A24, 12.25), a B & D variation on the “Type-A cougar has it off with a hot young dude” genre. Costarring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas, etc.

Last weekend’s CAA screening followed a TIFF showing on 9.10 and the Venice Film Festival debut on 8.30.

Friendo is calling it “a groundbreaking investigation of female sexuality by a female writer-director.” Kidman said afterwards it would have been a “completely different movie if a man had made it.”

Pic drew a “sensational response” from an elite audi4nce, he says. Attending were Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde, Peter Dinklage, Catherine Hardwick, Rooney Mara, Charlie Hunnam.

There was q post-screening discussion between Kidman, Reijn and THR‘s Scott Feinberg, followed by a schmoozy wine gathering. Nicole stayed very late.

CAA honcho Bryan Lourd was there; ditto Nicole’s agent Chris Andrews.

Pic will gather multiple noms, he says — Best Actress (Kidman), Best Actor (Dickinson), Best Direction and Writing (Reijn).

“Don’t underestimate A24…at this time last year I had the same feeling about Poor Things. And previously about All Quiet on Western Front, Parasite, Cold War.

HE Applauds “Hacks” Beating Overpraised “The Bear”

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All hail Steven Zallian’s Ripley…the finest Emmy contender of them all. I’ve never had the slightest interest in watching Shogun, the evening’s biggest winner. I hated Baby Reindeer so much I stopped watching after the first episode. Jodie Foster’s Emmy-winning performance in True Detective: Night Country had a commendable, lived-in, fraying-at-the-seams quality. All hail the failure of Only Murders in the Building to land a single Emmy award…good!

Dime A Dozen, Not Worth The Ink

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Another eccentric (older this time, nudging his 60s) apparently wanted to kill Donald Trump yesterday but this time didn’t even fire a shot.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is the would-be Florida golf course shooter. Trump was untouched and unfazed and not even in the immediate vicinity. He’s extremely thankful for the attention, of course.

Sunday’s incident might have made for a semi-alarming story as a one-off, but it pales alongside the attempted Pennsylvania assassination of two months ago, which resulted in a bloody ear and a bandage on the stage of the Republican National Convention.

I’m presuming that most average Americans are unimpressed, and are most likely reacting with a “what, again?” Or, if you will, “been there, done that.” This tinderbox country is teeming with well-armed nutters. What else is new?

Guaranteed Wank

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How do I know this? Dwayne Johnson and Lucy Liu, the king and queen of disposable paycheck garbage cinema, and the polar bear with a winning personality. All four holding their noses.

Who The Hell Cares About “The Life of Chuck”?

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Could the general lack of excitement have something to do with the fact that Mike Flanagan, no offense, is a boilerplate horror genre guy?

Winning the TIFF People’s Choice Award used to really mean something in terms of Best Picture Oscar contention. Now, not so much. Audience taste buds have coarsened.

I knew something strange had been injected into the Toronto water supply when Taika Watiti’s Jojo Rabbit won the top prize in 2019.

Sean Baker‘s excellent Anora and Jacques Audiard‘s reasonably decent Emilia Perez were the second- and third-place choices, respectively. Or the other way around…whatever.

From THR’s Scott Feinberg:

HE Laughed, Clapped During “MacArthur Park” Wedding Sequence

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…in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which I finally saw last night. I’d read several reviews plus the Wiki synopsis and had somehow missed spoilers about the flamboyant musical finale, which is based upon Jimmy Webb’s seven-minute 1968 hit single.

But right now HE spoiler whiners can go fuck themselves because the cat is totally out of the bag via Chris Willman’s 9.14 Variety interview with Webb. If they wanted a surprise they should have gotten off their asses and seen Beetlejuice Beetlejuice earlier. It opened on Friday, 9.6.

How good is the film itself? The MacArthur Park celebration aside, it’s basically a greatest-hits rehash of Tim Burton 1988 original, which felt a lot nervier then than Burton’s 36-years-later sequel does now. Call it a reasonably pleasant here-we-go-again thing. Not bad, lively, occasionally amusing, pricey-looking.

The people calling it better than the original are overly generous, taste-free whores, but as sequels go it’s really not bad.

The 1988 original cost $15 million or roughly $40M in 2024 dollars — the newbie cost $99 million. The oldie earned $85 million or $226M in 2024 bucks. As of today (9.15) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had earned around $250 million worldwide.

Why did Richard Harris, who reportedly hung extensively with Webb in London during the mid-hippie era, pronounce it “MacArthur’s Park”?

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One of Happiest Neighborhood Songs Ever

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My only problem with Jimmy Castor‘s “Hey, Leroy”, released in late ’66, is that it only plays for 2 minutes and 28 seconds. Castor should have recorded a 10-minute house version.

Castor, who passed in January 2012 at age 71, was a saxophonist. The Jimmy Castor Bunch included keyboardist/trumpeter Gerry Thomas, bassist Douglas Gibson, guitarist Harry Jensen, guitarist / sitarist Jeffrey Grimes, conga and triangle player Lenny Fridie, Jr., and drummers Elwood Henderson, Jr., and Bobby Manigault.

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Every Driver Knows

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…that as you’re approaching an incline of any serious steepness (35 to 45 degrees) or height that you need to tromp on the gas…gun it!…to overcome the natural inertia effect of a severe hill. Everyone knows the basic drill. And yet there are fuddy-duddy slowboats who don’t hit the gas and, failing this, appear to even forget to shift into low gear as they’re about to make the climb. They even do this on snow or sleet-covered hills during winter. If I’ve yelled “you fucking tool!” once while driving behind these pokey types, I’ve yelled it 500 times.

Wrong Punctuation, Man

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When laid-back hipsters say “like”, it’s meant as a pause word, a back-off term. It’s not part of the forward narrative flow. Therefore when Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski expresses support for Kamala Harris, he needs to write “DUDES FOR, LIKE, HARRIS, MAN”…dig?

How Much Do I Despise Thee, Sundance?

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Let me count the ways.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is reporting that if the declining Sundance Film Festival decides to keep Utah as its home base, it will primarily convene in Salt Lake City…ugghh!! Who the hell wants to spend ten days watching woke movies in that grim, godforsaken Mormon burgh?

The festival is all but dead anyway — moving it to SLC will most certainly kill the snowy-mountain, golden-Redford, ski-town vibe.

Boulder is, like, the only palatable option, man.

Posted last April: “Hey, Sundance Film Festival, are you listening? I’m shedding tears of joy over the news of your slow and inevitable demise. You’re essentially dead and nobody cares….in the words of the legendary J.J. Hunsecker, you’re a cookie filled with woke arsenic so get yourselves buried.

“Okay, that’s a little too harsh. Let me try again. How about ‘you’re Frankie Pentangeli before he opened his veins and bled to death in a bathtub’? Does that work better?

“Sundance will remain in Park City next January and in ’26, but they’re sniffing around for a new home. The festival isn’t decisively leaving Park City but something is prompting Hernandez and others to say ‘blah blah blah we’re happier and healthier than ever but we might leave,’ etc.

“If Sundance wants to extend its contract with Park City beyond ’26, the deadline is October 2024 — six months hence.

“Yes, Virginia…Sensitive Gargoyles Have Ruined Sundance,” posted on 12.27.21:

Open your veins, Sundance. Open your veins and bleed to death in the snow. You were the greatest American film festival for 30 years, but then you woked yourself to death. Nobody loves you now, nobody wants you…die, die.