Imagine being honestly, sincerely persuaded that May December is 2023’s finest film…imagine.
It is HE’s solemn opinion that anyone arriving at this conclusion is in the grip of a serious aesthetic fetish or an obsessive imbalance of some kind.
HE is earnestly supportive of Fallen Leaves (#4) and half-heartedly supportive of Showing Up (#2), Killers of The Flower Moon (#3) as far as it goes, Pacifiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Afire and The Zone of Interest (#5 through #8).
On 12.8 Ava DuVernay‘s Origin, an instructional drama about a writer exploring the racial caste system in this country, opened theatrically.
I had instinctively decided against seeing it because I regard DuVernay first and foremost as an agenda filmmaker — she has racial scores to settle and is not open to cosmic light and happenstance, at least by my understanding of the term.
On 12.13 Variety‘s Clayton Davis lamented the apparent fact that Origin is getting the cold shoulder from award-season handicappers.
Last night The Hot Mike‘s John Rocha and Jeff Sneider discussed Origin and Clayton’s column. The discussion happens between the 70-minute and 82-minute mark.
HE opinion: Ava DuVernay was seriously damaged after A Wrinkle in Time and has never recovered. She’s made her own reputational bed, and people are pretty much persuaded that she’s an agenda-driven filmmaker who isn’t fully honest (which Selma wasn’t, and one can at least question When They See Us in terms of characterizing the Central Park Five as utterly blameless victims), and who basically makes Black-favoring instructionals which stack the deck or otherwise put her thumb on the scale against historical and present-day racism.
DuVernay is basically a professional-grade woke Black female filmmaker and a symbol of fighting the power. And if you don’t like her films then YOU’RE a racist. People know who she is, and that, I believe, is why they’re not giving Origin the time of day.
Ava is about valiantly fighting the wrongs and the psychological plagues of racism perpetrated by white shitheads, the only problem being that she’s into anti-white portraiture more than honesty. And the industry can smell another Ava harangue in Origin.
Friendo: “I think it’s significant that the REVERSE example — that is, one line uttered by a sympathetic WHITE character that maligned the integrity of blacks (eg., ‘Don’t trust anyone, especially black people’) — would NEVER be excused or brushed aside by the likes of Glen Runciter. Not in a million years.
“We have different rules of behavior for people based on skin tone. And the fact that more of us don’t see how culturally destructive this is…this is absolutely mind-boggling.
“I mean, where do the Glen Runciters of the world see this going eventually? Anyplace good?”
pic.twitter.com/WxyIYmzGOH— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 11, 2023
Immediately after Matthew Perry‘s passing a friendly narrative began circulating — Perry was no longer using, and was clean and on the mend. Well, not so much.
Back in the days of reserved–seat roadshow engagements of big-budget, prestige-level films during the ‘40s, 50s and 60s, theatres would sell glossy, cardboard-fortified booklets that had lots of high-end images and smelled of fresh publisher’s ink.
This is the Spartacus program they sold at the DeMille theatere (B’way at 47th) when it opened on 10.6.60 — a month before JFK’s election.
They charged at least 75 cents if not a buck for these souvenir programs -— in 2023 terms they were charging $7.50 to $10 a pop.
What an absolute bummer life was in late 2020 — a feeling of dull suffocating horror enshrouding the country in every corner…masks, masks, masks. In December we threw caution to the winds by flying to NYC for four or five days. It helped a littie bit.
Last night I watched a little more than half of Sam Esmail’s Leave The World Behind (Netflix, now streaming).
As quietly creepy apocalyptic dramas go, I decided right away this is a lot better than M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin.
There’s no story tension to speak of, but all the spooky happenings (including the deer, the flamingoes, the smashing cars and the big tanker crashing into a beach) feel spacey and illogical and disconnected from any sort of scheme, rational or otherwise.
It’s more impressionistic (Bunuelian) than plotty, which is fine.
Mahershala Ali: “No one is in control…no one is pulling the strings…there is no going back to normal.”
I’d never seen Julia .Roberts in any sort of horror film…noteworthy.
The critics are mostly positive but Joe and Jane aren’t goin’ for it.
Barack and Michelle Obama exec produced, and my understanding is that Rumaan Alam’s 2020 source novel was inspired by Trump dystopia so you have to consider the political criticism angle.
12:45 am update: I’ve watched it to the end. Definitely a decent film.
Since Charles Melton doesn’t deliver all that strongly or memorably in May December (he’s fine but calm down), I’ve been puzzling over why he’s been winning. My initial thought was that his half-Korean lineage had something to do with it (i.e., actors of color being naturally favored these days). Then I realized, “Oh, this is a woke sympathy vote for young victims of sexual assault…Melton is an award season stand-in for all the kids who’ve been abused.”
The scolding, archly judgmental tone of the narration in this “Take” essay is very invested in the HORRIBLE WRONGNESS of older woman-teenage boy relationships. The judgment isn’t wrong, of course, but the narration is hugely annoying. Legal boundaries must always be respected and minors should be left the hell alone under all circumstances but…
Yes, I’ve said this a few times but I felt lonely, largely ignored and sexually miserable in my mid teens. If the right foxy teacher had come along and taken me into her boudoir I would’ve wept with gratitude, and I’d have never ratted her out to my friends. I would been so thankful to God the Father that I would’ve become a lifelong Catholic.
Samy Burch‘s May December screenplay is being campaigned to win Best Original Screenplay right now over David Hemingson for The Holdovers or even Barbie. PLEASE.
Bill McCuddy informs that the new title of May December is May Never.
39 years ago John Simon (1925-2019) called the original Beverly Hills Cop (directed by Martin Brest, released in ’84) “a truly contemptible film.”
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Netflix, sometime in ’24) is obviously a cynical paycheck project, and will almost certainly deliver none of the original juice. And the 62 year-old Murphy no longer looks like Axel — he looks like Sonny Liston.
26 years ago I was working as an in-house freelancer at People, and it was a mostly stifling gig, lemme tell ya. The only really “good” thing occured in early ’98 when a married staffer and I began a torrid love affair. The unrelenting emotional anxiety, stress and sensual, deep-navel nirvana lasted until September ’00. Anyway…
Sometime in the late spring of ’97 I pitched a story about the 50th anniversary of the alleged 1947 Hollister motorcycle riot, which inspired Lazlo Benedek‘s The Wild One (’53) and launched that iconic image of a hog-striding Marlon Brando with the shades and motorcycle cap.
The idea was that a team (myself and another People reporter) would attend the annual Hollister 4th of July rally and interview as many bikers as we could, and try and cobble together some kind of historical perspective piece that would commemorate the first time that mainstream Americans had heard about rowdy, beer-drinking ruffians rumbling around and agitating the locals.
People‘s New York editors approved the trip and off we went. And we gave it our very best, interviewing 20 or 25 bikers plus taking snaps and running all over town. But the article we turned in wasn’t punchy or throttle-y enough, they said. The New York editors were almost angry at us for not slamming it home.
I figured later on that we should have borrowed someone’s pickup truck and organized a dynamic tracking shot of 50 or 75 bikers motoring down a Hollister country road a la Brando, Jerry Paris, Gil Stratton and Lee Marvin. A single photo speaks a thousand words, etc.
