Kris Tapley has allegedly seen A Complete Unknown, but David Poland apparently hasn’t. I’m completely serious about the “Poland curse” — whatever James Mangold’s film turns out to be, I don’t want it to suffer because of this write-up. It wouldn’t be fair.

Last night in Glendale, Arizona, Donald “king of beasts” Trump summoned a violent fantasy by seeming to threaten Liz Cheney with a potential shooting…”nine barrels aimed at her.” But not so fast.

To be fair Trump was using the same kind of hypothetical that a late ’60s or early ’70s anti-war protestor might have been suggested in the cases of Robert MacNamara or Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War — “If Kissinger or MacNamara were suddenly thrust into combat duty in Vietnam, the war would very quickly come to an end” or words to that effect.

Trump mentioning the idea of Cheney facing bullets was obviously a rogue, stupid, inflammatory thing to say, and once he said this you can bet that a sizable contingent of gun-toting rightwing wackos immediately began to imagine Cheney being shot. But Trump, I think, was mainly trying to buttress his argument that Cheney is a “radical war hawk”, apparently because she favors supporting Ukraine in its long war against Russia.

Quentin Tarantino to Brett Easton Ellis on Joker: Folie a Deux:

Posted on Hollywood Elsewhere, 10.3.24:

I’m not running for elective office so I can blurt out the raw truth of it. Most semi-educated, hungry-for-knowledge people hate the lazybone bumblefucks — the rural Pennsylvania ones in particular — and their grunting, shuffling, “why can’t I live like a fabulous wealthy person?” attitudes.

I didn’t mean to say “stupid” — I meant ineducable.

I am personally soothed and even delighted to hear that so many of these overweight, poorly-dressed, gold-toe-sock-wearing life forms are frustrated and unhappy. Because they deserve to suffer. Because God wants them to…really. It’s their fate, their Biblical burden. The world is for the few.

I’ve rarely said this out loud as it makes me sound like a misanthrope, but the misery of these grumbling mope-heads kinda warms the cockles of my heart. I won’t express this in social situations, of course. Socially I smile and say “thank you” and show deference, but my deep-down feelings are a different story. Especially when I’m visiting the “Alabama” sections of Pennsylvania.

Did you know that classic, generic, old-fashioned black loafers — the kind that were sold everywhere for decades — have all but disappeared these days? 2024-styled loafers are sold online, sure, but they’re butt-ugly. It took me almost a full hour to find a seller that has old-time loafers. Either you get the classic coolness of these shoes or you don’t.

29 years ago the word-of-mouth on Cutthroat Island was so bad that I never saw it. Never streamed it….nothing. The reason was director Renny Harlin — his handling of Cliffhanger had convinced me he was a flash-banger, and wasn’t very interested in internals. Even now I don’t want to see it.

To Donald Trump, Red Skelton may as well be speaking Swahili.

…by pronouncing it correctly. It’s not PORTO Rico, as so many have pronounced it since last weekend’s MSG MAGA rally. It’s pronounced (tapping this out phonetically for the dumbshits) PuhWEHRTO Rico.

Okay?

And are therefore a joke to Joe and Jane Popcorn. Outside of elite, off-the-planet wokesters, nobody and I mean nobody cares about the Gotham Awards and especially their bullshit, trans-kowtowing, gender-neutral acting categories.

That said, all hail Anora‘s Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov, who have been nominated in lead and supporting, respectively.

Best Feature

Anora
Babygirl
Challengers
A Different Man
Nickel Boys

Best International Feature

All We Imagine As Light
Green Border
Hard Truths
Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell
Vermiglio

Best Documentary Feature

Dahomey
Intercepted
No Other Land
Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane
Union

Best Director

Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine As Light
Sean Baker, Anora
Guan Hu, Black Dog
Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw The TV Glow
RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Best Screenplay

Between The Temples
Evil Does Not Exist
Femme
His Three Daughters
Janet Planet

Breakthrough Director

Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls
India Donaldson, Good One
Alessandra Lacorazza, In The Summers
Vera Drew, The People’s Joker
Mahdi Fleifel, To A Land Unknown

Outstanding Lead Performance

Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
Keith Kupferer, Ghostlight
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun
Justice Smith, I Saw The TV Glow

Outstanding Supporting Performance

Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw The TV Glow
Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
Katy O’Brian, Love Lies Bleeding
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Adam Pearson, A Different Man
Brian Tyree Henry, The Fire Inside

Breakthrough Performer

Lily Collias, Good One
Ryan Destiny, The Fire Inside
Maisy Stella, My Old Ass
Izaac Wang, Dìdi Y
Brandon Wilson, Nickel Boys

HE-posted 17 years ago:

I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind three times during the initial 1977 run, but when I saw it again on laser disc in the early ’90s I began to realize how consistently irritating and assaultive most of it is from beginning to end.

There are so many moments that are profoundly irritating or stylistically affected or impossible to swallow.

The air-traffic controller scene is an exception, and by far the best scene in the film. The opening Sonora desert scene is also first-rate; ditto the mother-ship arrival scene near the conclusion.

Othewise I can’t watch CE3K now without gritting my teeth. Almost everything about that film that seemed delightful or stunning or even breathtaking in ’77 (excepting the scenes I’ve mentioned) now makes me want to jump out the window.

That stupid mechanical monkey with the cymbals.

Those little toys that suddenly activate and start moving around.

The way those little screws on the floor heating vent unscrew themselves.

Bob Balaban deciding to shout out his confusion about the brand new WW II-era planes found in the Sonoran desert…”I don’t understaaaand!”

The elderly couple waiting for the arrival of remote alien ships on the mountain road in the evening…somehow they know the ships are going to fly by! And after the ships appear, Spielberg has the smallest of them flash a light beam at a McDonald’s sign.

The way those Indian guys all point heavenward at the exact same moment when they’re asked where the sounds came from.

Melinda Dillon going “Bahahahhahhree!”

That idiotic invisible poison gas scare around Devil’s Tower.

That awful actor playing that senior Army officer who denies it’s a charade.

The way the electricity comes back on in Muncie, Indiana, at the same moment that those three small UFO drones disappear into the heavens.

The shut-down, mule-like resistance of Teri Garr‘s character to believe even a little bit in Richard Dreyfuss‘s sightings.

It’s one unlikely, implausible, baldly manipulative crap move after another.

The worst element of all is the way Spielberg has those guys who are supposed to board the mother ship wearing the same red jumpsuits and sunglasses and acting like total robots. Why? No reason. Spielberg just liked the idea of them looking and acting that way.

This is a prime example of why Spielberg‘s considerable gifts don’t overcome the fact that he’s a hack. He knows how to get you but there’s never anything under the “get.”

Alexander Hamilton: “If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.”