From “Ringing Your Curtain Down“, posted on 10.11.20: “The reviews are correct, the rumors are true: Michelle Pfeiffer has lucked into the best role of her life in Azazel Jacobs‘ French Exit (Sony Pictures Classics, 2.12.21), a sardonic “comedy” with a gently surreal quality around the edges.
“Which means that it’s not all that surreal, or at least not to me. A talking deceased husband (Tracy Letts) inhabiting the body of a cat or cryptically conversing with his widow and son during a seance…whatever. What French Exit is really about is dry gallows humor by way of a certain kind of “I won’t back down” resignation. And within that particular realm it’s very, very good.
Posted on 9.15.13: Manhattan life is plagued by many irritations. I hate the fact that subway car doors frequently don’t open for several seconds after the train stops at a station. (In Paris you can manually open the doors yourself with that silver latch handle thing.) But the biggest drag these days (for me anyway) are the slowpokes on the street and especially in the subways.
I’m not saying they have to race around like crazy rats, but what’s wrong with walking with a purposeful stride? Very few do this, it seems, and the ones that are really slow are always blocking the sidewalks in groups of five or six or more. I was going to say it’s the tourists but I’m starting to think it’s almost everyone these days except for X-factor types. For me walking around Manhattan is exhilarating exercise, especially if you walk with a little bounce in your step; for the vast majority it’s apparently something to be endured by reducing energy expenditure as much as possible and shuffling around like 80somethings.
So basically when you’re walking around Manhattan half the game is spotting the “blockers” before you’re stuck behind them and have to sidestep their ass. The ones to watch out for in this respect are couples of any age, older women, heavy middle-aged men and especially urban females of girth.
I first mentioned this eight years ago: “Out-of-towners always seem to walk the streets without the slightest hint of spunk or urgency in their step, like they’re making their way from the bedroom to the refrigerator at 2 ayem in their pajamas and nightgowns. And they’re always wearing those dead-to-the-world expressions. (Writer Fran Leibowitz has described the shuffling gait of tourists as the ‘mall meander.’)
“Every day I’m walking along at my usual spirited pace and these Jabbas and sea lions are always walking ahead of me in self-protecting groups or, worse, three abreast. The idea that they might be blocking people, much less defying the basic transportation law of going with the flow, doesn’t seen to occur to them. Then again, the flow in Jabba tourist areas (Times Square, Rockefeller Center) is very zombie-paced so it probably feels right from their perspective.”
1) Nomadland (49 votes) / HE: Yowsah.
2) First Cow (41) / HE: Good film but not this good…c’mon.
3) Never Rarely Sometimes Always (40) / HE: Somber, touching film about tural teens getting a NYC abortion, but doesn’t hold a candle to Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days.
4) Da 5 Bloods (35) / HE: Deserving of respect but all that ’60s montage stuff was just thrown in to augment a so-so essence.
5) Minari (34) / HE: Good, earnest film.
6) I’m Thinking About Ending Things (32) / HE: Creepy but fascinating. Grows on you. The Oklahoma! stage performance sections + Agnes DeMille choreography.
7) Lovers Rock (29) / HE: Still haven’t seen it.
8) The Invisible Man (26) / / HE: Ranked higher than Tenet? Ludicrous.
9) Trial of the Chicago 7 (25) / HE: Yup.
10) Mank (21) / HE: Deserves higher placement.
11) Bacurau (21) / HE: Brazilian social-clash Peckinpah-Jodorowsky…hatedit.
12) David Byrne’s American Utopia (21) / HE: Haven’t seen it.
13) Palm Springs (20) / HE: No way. Ridiculous. Mostly hated it. Sundancey.
14) Tenet (19) / HE: Should be among the top ten.
15) Dick Johnson Is Dead (19) / HE: Still haven’t seen it.
16) Bad Education (18) / HE: Agreed…a sharply observed docudrama.
17) Time (17)
18) The Assistant (17) / HE: Nope.
19) Vitalina Varela (16)
20) Pixar’s Soul (15) / HE: Bothersome, underwhelming, doesn’t make sense.
There’s no question that (a) dying is a part of life, (b) we’re all gonna get there and (c) there’s nothing like a little wit and levity to brighten our awareness of the inevitable. And yes, Dick Johnson Is Dead has ratings of 100% and 89% on RT and Metacritic, respectively.
The user scores on these aggregate sites, however, are somewhat lower — 7.4 on Metacritic, 8.1 on RT. And that’s where the real truth lies.
Never, ever trust critics when it comes to films like this. They’re not allowed to be honest about their deep-down feelings about anything, and they know it and so do readers. Which is one of the ways in which Hollywood Elsewhere is different.
I watched my father and mother approach death and deal with the physical and mental decline aspects, and they weren’t especially happy about it, I can tell you. At the very end my mother just said “fuck it” and refused to eat or even talk with me or Jett when we last visited her. She just wanted it to be over.
I’m sorry but I’d rather contemplate life and all its myriad intrigues, expectations and pitfalls than the absolute finality of “lights out and adios muchachos”. And I really, really don’t want to submit to a meditation about old-age dementia.
If a deep dive into old age is required, give me Stephen Walker and Bob Cilman‘s Young At Heart (’07). I loved this film, and so did my mom when I finally managed to show it to her.
I’m not refusing to watch Dick Johnson Is Dead. I’m actually nudging myself in that direction by the very act of writing this riff.
But at the same time I’m a bit like Terrence Stamp in The Hit — philosophically or even serenely accepting of death on a certain level, but when the proverbial John Hurt figure pulls out the gun and says “we’re gonna do it now, Willy,” my reaction would be “not now…it’s tomorrow…we have to get to Paris first…you’re not doing the job…not now!”
Keith Watson’s Slant review: “A drawback to Johnson’s deliberately gimmicky style—which includes glitzy visions of Dick in heaven surrounded by notable personages as diverse as Frederick Douglass, Sigmund Freud, and Bruce Lee—is that it doesn’t allow us to access her father as a person. We feel his warmth and his abiding love for his family, but we learn relatively little of his personal history beyond the highlights.
“Dick’s attitude toward his own death is so breezy and his relationship with Johnson so frictionless that the film can at times feel remarkably undramatic.”
I am a true lover and dedicated fan of Italian and French cuisine.
I tasted my first French dish in 1998, during my first and most unforgettable visit to Paris. I’ve been back since then, but I distinctly remember the first-time aroma of magical Paris streets. This most beautiful city in the world smelled so wonderful and romantic. Quiche, ratatouille, rooster in wine, snails, foie gras, truffles, cheeses. Quel délicieux repas!
I tried Italian cuisine later. and fell in love desperately, irrevocably and forever. Ravioli, Lasagna, tortellini, fritata, risotto, tortelloni. Che pasti deliziosi!
Italian and French cuisine is the most exquisite and balanced for me. In all respects.
I don’t know how to cook and frankly don’t enjoy it. But I admire men who know how, and who love the business of cooking and serving.
In the below photo is a pasta dish I prepared in a Roman apartment (via di Monserrato, 154). It was a rare case when the cooking spirit was suddenly upon me on Italian ground. I bought some handmade pasta in Venice but didn’t prepare it until we moved into our Rome abode.
“How is it possible that [roughly 40%] of America admires or at least supports Donald Trump? He’s been described as a master persuader, but I’ve found Trump to be among the least persuasive people I’ve ever come across. I see on obvious con man, an ignoramus…his efforts to appear credible often make him look ridiculous and even deranged. And yet [nearly half] the country views him very differently. And [I’ve begun to] understand how he is supported because of his flaws, rather than in spite of them.
“He’s a paragon of greed and narcissism and pettiness and malice. Real malice. A man who wears his hatred on his sleeve. And for a man who demands loyalty from those around him, he is an amazingly disloyal person. All of this is right on the surface. And so his appeal has been a total mystery to me. But I believe I have now solved that mystery.
“The essence of Trump’s appeal is best understood in comparison with the messaging of his opponent on the left.
“One thing that Trump never communicates is a sense of his moral superiority. The man is totally without sanctimony. He never communicates that he is better than you. Because he’s not, and everyone knows it. The man is just a bundle of sin and gore, and never pretends or even aspires to be anything more. And because of this, because he’s never really judging you, he offers a truly safe base for human frailty. And hypocrisy. And self doubt.
“Trump offers what no priest can offer. A total expiation of shame. His personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm. Trump is Fat Jesus. “Grab ’em by the pussy” Jesus. An “I’ll eat nothing but cheeseburgers if I want to” Jesus. “I wanna punch them in the face” Jesus. “Go back to your shithole countries” Jesus. A no-apologies Jesus.
“What are we getting from the [wokester] left? Exactly the opposite message. Pure sanctimony. Pure judgment. You are not good enough. You’re guilty not only for your own sins, but for the sins of your fathers. The crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head. And if you’re a cis white heterosexual male, which we know is the absolute core of Trump’s support, you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic sexist barbarian. Tear down those statues and bend the fucking knee.”
In other words, Harris is saying, the wokesters are almost as much of a cancer and a pestilence as Trump.
If you’re going to mount plywood over your display windows for fear of an election riot, do it with style and flair.
Marlon Brando and friends sometime around ’71. Same appearance and hair length as he displayed in The Nightcomers and Last Tango in Paris. The woman is Jill Banner (The President’s Analyst), whom Brando met during the filming of Christian Marquand‘s godawful Candy (’68). Banner died in a Ventura Freeway auto accident in August ’82.
A pair of clear plastic masks arrived today. Much better than common masks. You can breathe more easily, for one thing.
Larry Karaszewski’s “A Handful of Worms” was a decent album for a first-time effort. Alas as we all know, Larru abandoned music and, to our general benefit, turned to screenwriting.
Most appallingly dressed generation in American history, and perhaps in the history of the world.
Everyone who attended Kendall Jenner‘s birthday party last Saturday night (Halloween) had to first be insta-tested and given a clean bill of health before going upstairs. It isn’t cool to throw a big party these days, of course, but if you’re gonna say “fuck it, I don’t care, life is short, let’s do it anyway”, Kendall chose the right methodology.
The party happened at Harriet’s Rooftop atop WeHo’s 1 Hotel.
Roughly 100 coolios attended, including Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Jaden Smith, Hailey Baldwin, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Scott Disick, Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott, Paris Hilton, Justine Skye, Quavo, Winnie Harlow, Swaeetie and Doja Cat. I trust they had a good time and that the testing was efficient and everyone’s fine, etc . We’re all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that includes the above. No one’s better than anyone else.
But I have a question. Imagine for the sake of imagining that Kendall’s guests were on a Los Angeles-to-Seoul flight aboard a privately-charted jumbo jet, and an hour or two past Hawaii the jet was shot down by terrorists and sank into the Pacific. Apart from the loss of life suffered by the crew, how exactly would the world be a lesser place as a result of this tragedy?
Imagine that a gathering of old-time Hollywood hotshots were all on a Pan American Clipper flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu in early 1939…Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Joel McCrea, Olivia De Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Don Ameche, Jean Arthur, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Victor Fleming, Alfred Hitchcock, Viven Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard, Ann Sheridan, Ray Milland, Rosalind Russell. And an hour or two west of Los Angeles the plane was shot down by Axis agents and sank into the Pacific. Would the world have been a lesser place?
No, you probably didn’t. Not until I mentioned it. But 1.66:1 was totally standard in England and Europe back in the day. Which is why I’ve long claimed to have seen a 1.66 version of Rosemary’s Baby in Paris back in the mid ’70s. Like Dr. No and Goldfinger, From Russia With Love was shot at 1.37:1 It was projected at 1.66:1 in Europe and 1.85:1 in the U.S.
Earlier today Rory hasked “what’s the absolute worst film to get a Best Picture nomination since the category was expanded? Extra points for picking one that isn’t Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Forget Rory’s perimeters — what were the least and most deserving Best Picture nominees in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012?
Least Deserving 2009 Best Picture Nominees: Precious, Based On The Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire and Inglourious Basterds. Most Deserving 2009 Best Picture Nominees: The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Avatar, An Education, Up In The Air.
Least Deserving 2010 Best Picture Nominees: Toy Story 3, The King’s Speech, Inception, 127 Hours. Most Deserving 2010 Best Picture Nominees: The Social Network, Black Swan, The Kids Are All Right.
Least Deserving 2011 Best Picture Nominees: The Artist, War Horse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Hugo, The Help. Most Deserving 2011 Best Picture Nominees: Moneyball, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris.
Least Deserving 2012 Best Picture Nominees: Life of Pi, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Lincoln. Most Deserving 2012 Best Picture Nominees: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Eduardo Ponti‘s The Life Ahead stars Sophia Loren as a 70something resident of Bari, Italy**, who takes in a feral street urchin. The trailer tells you where the story goes except for the last couple of beats.
The Life Ahead is the second filmed adaptation of Romain Gary‘s “The Life Before Us” (’75). The first version, Moshe Mizrahi‘s Madame Rosa (’77), was set in the Belleville section of Paris and starred Simone Signoret. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Ponti, 47, is the son of Loren and late producer Carlo Ponti.
Select journos will be given a look at The Life Ahead fairly soon. It will begin streaming on Netflix on 11.13.20.