To promote the just-published “TheWorldIsYours: TheStoryofScarface,” author Glenn Kenny hosted a Wednesday evening (5.8) IFC Center screening of Brian DePalma’s 1983 gangster classic.
After the show GK discussed aspects of the production saga, took questions and signed a few books with a felt-tip pen.
HE has read the first 40 or 50 pages and heartily approves. A very tasty and nourishing Hollywood story with dozens of first-hand sources. The prose is smooth and confident…swaggering even.
Al Pacino didn’t speak to Kenny because his own personal Scarface saga account will appear in the autobiographical “Sonny Boy,” which will publish in October.
…Glenn Powell, youngish but no spring chicken, is going to have to star in a movie that isn’t mechanized, prefabricated, power-pumped, big-studio bullshit.
No, I still haven’t seen Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man (Netflix, 6.7), which began screening eight months ago and still hasn’t opened.
You can’t just spew jizz-whizz all the time. Every now and then it’s really necessary to put some nutrition into the cereal bowl.
When Elvis Presley died in August 1977, John Lennon was famously quoted as saying “Elvis died when he went into the army in ’58.” While it’s arguably true that Presley’s peak years were from ’55 to ’58 (a four-year run), Lennon unfairly dismissed Presley’s televised comeback special, which aired on 12.3.68. He reclaimed his essence that night.
It was reported this morning by Iranian cinema journalist Mansour Jahani that Mohammad Rasoulof, director of the forthcoming Cannes competition selection The Seed of the Sacred Fig, has been sentenced by the 29th branch of the Islamic Revolution Court of Iran to eight years in the slam.
Rasoulof (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, A Man of Integrity, There Is No Evil) will also be whipped, fined and have his property confiscated.
Sacred Fig summary: “Iman, an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, grapples with mistrust and paranoia as nationwide political protests intensify and his gun mysteriously disappears.”
HE to Rasoulof: Blow this pop stand, move to Paris, live in glorious exile. Don’t give those fuckers eight years of your life.
Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon (20th Century Fox, 3.16) is definitely somewhat decent — an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance that’s also about coming out. It’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve actually half-liked, and it is kind of a big cultural deal that Fox is releasing a gentle, emotionally pliant, same-sex love story in 2400 theatres.**
Love, Simon is smartly written (the screenplay authors are This Is Us showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger) and straight-friendly, but — here come the caveats — it feels like a professional sell-job. Like an advertisement for the way things ought to be in Young Gay Utopia. It feels too tidy, too TV-realm, too “produced” and not, you know, laid-back enough. (Like Call Me By Your Name, say — a totally settled, unforced vibe flick from start to finish.)
Amiable, mild-mannered Simon (Nick Robinson) is a closeted high school senior living with his parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner) and younger sister (Talitha Bateman) in a well-tended Atlanta suburb. But the realm is essentially a blend of Disney World and a 21st Century update of John Hughes Land — an affluent, multi-cultural, progressive-minded hamlet where almost everyone (except for one appalling sociopath, played by Logan Miller, who causes all the trouble) is cool about everything.
Although his parents and friends are fair-minded and accepting of whatever, Simon has decided to wait until college to announce that he’s gay. But then he falls into this anonymous online chat with another gay guy — a local kid who calls himself Blue. The movie is partly about guessing who Blue might be. It’s also about Miller’s batshit-insane character, Martin, who discovers Simon’s flirtation with Blue and uses this knowledge to blackmail him into helping him get together with one of Simon’s close friends (i.e., a girl). I was saying to myself “if this was Goodfellas Martin would get an ice pick in the back of the neck.”
Simon suspects (and we are led to presume) that Blue might be one of three guys — all good looking, one of a POC persuasion and the other two Caucasian, one dark-haired and one semi-blonde. They all seem like good candidates, but I was a bit disappointed when the real Blue was revealed. (Not my choice.) Simon, however, is ready to roll with all of these guys. He’ll fuck anyone or anything.
Want a better, less conventional ending? Simon is really attracted to A, vaguely attracted to B and not that attracted to C, and then Blue turns out to be C. And Simon says, “Aaah…okay…life is unfair. But it’s nice to know ya, brah. I like what you have to say.” And they become good friends.
…who won’t stop saying, “Okay, so Trump cheated on his Eastern European trophy wife by fucking Stormy Daniels…that’s who Trump is, what he does, total animal…so what?
To the people trying to compare this Stormy Daniels case to Bill Clinton, you’re way off base.
This wasn’t about sex.
It’s not about hush money.
It’s about election interference, plain and simple, the same thing trump accuses everyone of.
I’ve been saying this for years, but Zoomers are such a drag. Many of us revel in our loathing for them. The world has become a grimmer, more intimidating, far less beautiful and enjoyable place since Generation Z came of age. Not all of them, just the ayeholes.
I’m not saying all Zoomers are “bad” people, but a huge percentage seem like joyless mutants…a generation of fanatical Strelnikovs and DEI obsessives…identity politics, non-binary, ghastly clothing, trans obsesssions, they/them, cisgender, out of shape or obese, puberty blockers, gender dysphoria, hating on J. K. Rowling, identity music, sexual abstinence….if we were living in ancient Roman times and I was a king-shit emperor, I would feed these jokers to the lions in the Colisseum.
