I’ve lost count of all the “subtitled Hitler rants in the bunker” videos I’ve posted over the last 15 years, but I’ve always posted their embed codes. I don’t know why I can’t find a workable, size-adjustable e.c. for this recent “Hitler rants about J.D. Vance” video, but I can’t. I’m sorry but it’s funny.
No filmmaker worth his or her salt would ever say any given film is the “best” they’ve ever seen. They might say this or that film is exceptional or blazing or extra-brilliant, but never “the best of all time”…bullshit.
You can have your little top-ten lists and champion your life-long favorites, but cinema is always shape-shifting…an impermanent feast…and the seas are always surging and receding, not to mention our mood pockets. And if anyone knew that it was Stanley Kubrick.
On top of which AllThatJazz hasn’t aged well. It’s slick and cynical and very inside-baseball, but aimed at the none-too-brights…heavy handed, over-underlined. The “On Broadway” audition sequence is levitational but there’s too much “acting” going on in the second and third acts. Bob Fosse’s ironic points wear you down.
Depending on the stress and alienation and fantasy levels in my head, which I’ve been grappling with since I was three. I’m not always day-dreaming about something or some place else, but I often am. I hear songs (both transcendent and banal), listen to movie dialogue, recall emotional pit-of-the-stomach moments, sometimes weep inexpressively, etc. Every now and then I’ll shake myself by the shoulders and scold the dreamer: “Will you stop this, please? You’re here right now…this is real…you’re not watching a screen…eyes on the road.”
This morning a friend and I were wondering as follows:
How steeped in ‘70s culture is Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night (Sony, 10.11), the forthcoming dramedy about the launch of Saturday Night Live in October 1975? Or is it primarily a 2024 film that rummages around inside a 1975 souvenir box, trying on this and that, without really submitting to 1975 culture as it actually was?
The proof in the pudding could be the Chevy Chase-Richard Pryor job interview skit (“Word Association“), which actually aired on 12.13.75, or roughly two months after the show premiered.
A legendary, jolting provocation about subiiminal racism in the workplace and indeed throughout the country at the time, the skit would never be aired today in any format due to the racially incendiary dialogue. But since it represents the kind of nervy, edgy comedy that SNL was about in the early days, it would seem like an excellent thing to include in Reitman’s film…it would give the viewer a strong taste of what was going on back then.
Reitman’s film, after all, is about recalling that era and the values and conversation that were current at the time.
Saturday Night‘s Wiki page doesn’t list Pryor as a supporting character so it appears as if Reitman may have bypassed “Word Association.” He could’ve easily popped it in (nobody would have cared about the two-months-later airdate) but something tells me the Chase-Pryor skit was avoided with some relief.
It was reported earlier today that Saturday Night will play Telluride before Toronto.
Drop to your knees and praise Jehovah! Hollywood Elsewhere along with tens of millions of left-centrist Joe Popcorn types have apparently been spared the mutenostrilagony of watching jowly, gone-to-seed Joaquin Phoenix dropping trou and doing God knows what with a younger male lover…
Anyone who says “I love everybody” is not — repeat, NOT — a comedian. Feigned bliss and alleged happiness are profoundly unfunny concepts. Real comedians lean depressive or sardonic for the most part, and are certainly judgmental. Many have banshees howling within. I don’t know want to listen to any standup comic who talks about the love he/she feels for the human flock. I want to run in the opposite direction.
I’m not doubting that “Apple is done with wide theatrical releases for all of its movies,” which Jeff Sneiderreported on 8.8.24. But I am doubting that Jon Watts’ Wolfs (9.20) is a movie of any lasting substance. People can sense or smell this right now.
It’s clearly a movie that dribbles more than shoots…it’s a droll comedic wank, a crime caper thing, and this is one reason, at least, why Apple has decided to abandon plans for a wide release and just briefly open it in theatres before going to streaming. Because nobody out there cares or will care. The George Clooney-Brad Pitt pairing is seen as an agreeable thing but far from vital. A likable shrugger.
Three debates between Donald and Kamala — 9.4, 9.10 (six days apart?) and 9.25. If I were Kamala I’d agree to three debates but spaced more widely apart. Perhaps the final one could happen sometime in mid-October.
ABC has confirmed that both campaigns have agreed to a September 10th debate.
I experienced an emotionally leaky moment yesterday. It came from listening to my Sunday in the Park with George cast album, and “Move On” in particular. And I was driving around Westport. I felt so melted down at one point that I pulled over to collect myself.
I’ve only watched this epic Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical via You Tube. Never caught the original B’way presentation, and never caught the Jake Gyllenhaal revival. Steven Spielberg really should’ve filmed George rather than West Side Story.