If by clapping my hands three times I could Dr. Manhattan the right-wing teardown agents who are doing everything they can to block and tarnish Team Obama without offering anything in the way of constructive ideas or strategies for getting us out of this rancid mess (which the righties got us into with their free-market coddling of Wall Street sociopaths), I would clap my hands three times. If there was ever a time in this country’s history in which the term “smite the Philistines” needs to be literally acted upon…
The mood-setting visuals before the strum-and-wail music portion are striking, to say the least. Exquisite photography and a generally fine job by Portland-based actor-director Scott Coffey (Ellie Parker). The band is the Handsome Furs.
I had a nice plate of Eggs Benedict and some very cool conversing this morning with Duplicity director-writer Tony Gilroy at BLT, an upscale country-type restaurant at the corner of Sixth and Central Park South. An industrial espionage caper romance with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, Duplicity is agreeably layered and much sharper and more agile-minded than yours truly. That’s a compliment. Don’t people hate thrillers they can figure out too easily? Those smarter-than-me types, I suspect, are going to love this.
As Michael Clayton did a year and a half ago, Duplicity made me feel like the slow kid in the back of the class. I was into it, on top of it, closely examining, leaning forward, waiting for the Big Thing to happen, wondering if I’d somehow missed it, getting worried…and then it all kicked in. I can’t review the film until 3.19, but I’ll tap out something about our chat tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, Joel and Ethan Coen recently told a director pal who ran into them socially that they’re not going to Cannes this year. So I guess we can all forget seeing A Serious Man there. Unless…you know, the boys decide it’ll be ready in time and they’re into it after all. Focus Features will be releasing it early next October. A Toronto Film Festival preem…right?
Described on the Wikipedia page as a “gentle but dark period comedy” (i.e., 1967), A Serious Man “is based loosely on the Coen’s childhoods in a Jewish academic family in the largely Jewish suburb of St Louis Park, Minnesota.
“That Runaways script has to be the biggest load of dog crap I’ve ever read. Every other word is ‘dog cunt’ or ‘dogshit, and Joan Jett is always taking a piss or rubbing her crotch. It is really a poor excuse for a screenplay, and I can’t believe that Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart are signed for it.” — Written by a moderately long-of-tooth mainstream journalist friend who read Floria Sigismondi‘s script a day or so ago.
This opinion obviously isn’t the last word, and I’m not so sure I found the idea of Kristen Stewart-as-Joan Jett acting coarse and vulgar unappealing, per se. At the very least this might prompt Sigismondi to consider the possibility that the script needs a little soul and refinement. Does anyone feel otherwise? There must be advocates out there.
The reason I was never into The Runaways is because very few in this country were. The band recorded five albums, toured around the world and met with huge success abroad, especially in Japan, from ’75 to ’79. But they couldn’t connect here. Jett was a headliner and co-founder. The others were Sandy West. Micki Steele, Jackie Fox, Lita Ford, and Cherie Currie.
I’d personally love to see a film about the rise and fall of Bow Wow Wow. I first heard them when I was in London in December 1980, where I’d flown for a Peter O’Toole interview piece I was trying nail down for GQ. I flew back to the States 100% totally mad for “Louis Quatorze” and “Sexy Eiffel Tower.”
I had heard of them a bit when I first arrived, and I remember being at loud party about a week into my stay with some Time Out friends. I was standing with a group of guys and there was this raunchy drum-heavy track playing, and I asked who it was. “You know who it is!” one of them said. No, I don’t, I answered — who is it? “Don’t hand me that shit…you know who it is!” he shouted. I do? “You know it, you know it!” Bow Wow Wow? “That‘s right!”
“It is easy to appreciate Anna Faris: a cult is forming around her. It is less easy to shed the slightly moralistic hand-wringing that accompanies much of the acclaim she has received – the idea that she is wasting her talent on bad projects; that her collaborators should recognize her skill set and exploit it; and that serious fans are only ‘mucking about’ in bad movies for the certain redemptive quality that her great turns bring to these (largely) unworthy titles.” — from a Zachary Campbell piece on rouge.com.
This columnist will never get on the Anna Faris cult bandwagon until she starts appearing in better films, which it to say work with better people. If Alfonso Cuaron, Bennett Miller or Alexander Payne use her one day, great…then I’ll pay attention. But I’m 90% sure it’ll never happen. Because she seems to be no more than a quarter-inch deep.
Rush Limbaugh reportedly suggested today that Sen. Ted Kennedy would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. “Before it’s all over, it’ll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill,” he said. A sound file containing the comment is embedded in this HuffPost news page.
The gist of this Anne Thompson/Daily Beast analysis piece is that Watchmen doesn’t have the moxie, the muscle or the love needed to perform strongly after this weekend. The conventional wisdom is at least $70 million by Sunday evening.
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