Friendo: “A grieving widower appears on TV to lament his wife’s passing, but also to push a website and products he’ll continue to sell. The average person is too obtuse these days to see what a cynical move this is. This is Elmer Gantry stuff. Alan Hamel pushed products and a website and claimed in this chat with Today‘s co-hosts that his late wife, barely dead a couple of days, wanted women to keep buying ‘incredible’ products. This is a eulogy delivered via QVC.”

Eight or nine days ago I listened to a newly released version of Joni Mitchell‘s “See You Sometime” from “Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975).”

And it won’t let me go. I’m hearing it over and over…car, shower, writing, walking, shopping. The only way to discharge a pernicious ear bug is to simply tough it out through dozens of listenings….eventually it’ll run out of gas.

This song is not one of Mitchell’s all-time greatest, but I can tell you one thing: There’s no way Taylor Swift will ever write or perform a song anywhere near as gentle, complex, delicate, intimate, poetic and melodically moody as “See You Sometime.”

Swift does what she does very well or least very successfully, but Mitchell’s eclectic mode of expression (or a facsimile) just isn’t in her. She’ll never get there. Mitchell’s stuff is alluring, sexy, sophisticated, nectary, lasting — Swift songs are candy.

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Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest has been shorn of explicitness while humming with implication. That’s the basic idea, and either this approach knocks you flat or it doesn’t. It’s a “brilliant” film as far as its austere design allows it to go, but the only thing that really got me was the opening overture — intense “oh, shit” music played over a black background before light invades and the film begins.

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Osage Nation language consultant Christopher Cote on Killers of the Flower Moon: “This story is almost being told from the perspective of [Leonardo DiCaprio‘s] Ernest Burkhart, and they kinda give him this conscience and it kind of depicts that there’s love [between Ernest and Lily Gladstone‘s Mollie]. But when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love….that’s not love. That’s just beyond abuse.”

Obviously with Christopher taking issue with a key dramatic choice made by DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth and with Jeff Sneider also balking, Killers of the Flower Moon is clearly in trouble. (And so is Gladstone although she may not know it yet.) For those who think Oppenheimer is the cat’s meow, Cote and Sneider have given them reason to feel comfort.

@hollywoodreporter #osagenation language consultant christopher cote shares his complicated feelings about #martinscorsese’s #killersofthesunflowermoon #killersoftheflowermoonmovie ♬ original sound – The Hollywood Reporter

In the wake of all those non-convictions, Kevin Spacey has delivered a riveting, commanding performance.

Or, if you prefer, Reality Sandwich.

But they’re obviously called “cringe comedies” for a reason, and for this very reason I’ve never been a fan of the sub-genre. But of all the cringe comedies, the one I admire the most is Elaine May‘s The Heartbreak Kid (’72).

The 2007 Ben Stiller remake missed the mark but May’s original holds up. And this January ’23 tribute piece, voiced by CineMollusk, hits the nail on the head.

Carrying the narrative ball is Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin), “possibly the emptiest man on earth” and a guy who discovers with a startling jolt that he can’t stand his new bride (Jennie Berlin) as he watches her eat an overstuffed egg-salad sandwich…”a film with “an irredeemably black heart…a relentless examination of an empty world full of empty people.”

My eyes never moistened at the endings of The Iron Giant, Monsters, Inc., The Fox And The Hound, Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, Schindler’s List, The Green Mile, Big Fish, Coco, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, About Time, My Girl, Interstellar, Up, Marley & Me, Philadelphia, Edward Scissorhands, Toy Story 3, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Grave Of The Fireflies, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Mulan or Inside Out.

But the Patton ending (“All glory is fleeting”) does it to me every time. Ditto the last five minutes of The Last Temptation of Christ and the last two minutes of Brokeback Mountain….what else?

Posted on 7.15.23:

“While Disney still uses Walt’s name, they’ve all but abandoned his legacy. There’s no better example of Disney’s disregard for its heritage or its audience than its current remake of the iconic Disney story that launched the company into what it is today, Snow White.” -… pic.twitter.com/TmBHZVbgUe

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 16, 2023

Riz Ahmed on Twitter: “We are told there are two sides to what is happening in Israel and Palestine. But in my heart, I know there is only one — the side of our humanity.

“What happened in Israel last week was horrific and wrong. The pain and fear so many are feeling is deep and real. [And] what’s happening in Gaza now, and [which] has been happening in Palestine under the Occupation for decades, is horrific and wrong. The depth and reality of this suffering cannot be ignored.

“If we look only in one direction, we will go even deeper into darkness. But that is exactly what is happening right now. We are being asked to look away while the civilians of Gaza, half of them children, are running out of time.

“If we are on the side of humanity we must urgently speak up to try and avert the loss of innocent life. This means calling for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza’s civilians and vital infrastructure, the denial of food, water and electricity, the forced displacement of people from their homes. These are morally indefensible war crimes.”

Ahmed’s manager should gave taken him aside and said, “In the current climate and particularly since Hamas militants massacred 1200 Israelis in their homes ten days ago, you can’t say that bad things have been happening in Palestine under the Israeli Occupation for decades. It doesn’t matter if it’s true — it’s just something you can’t say now.”

Just after the Toronto Film Festival a journo colleague told me I’d like American Fiction (Amazon/MGM, 12.15). Now I understand what he meant. It’s Tootsie by way of Black identity and psychotic white woke-itude.

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Posted this morning by freeek as part of the “Stop Cillian Murphy” thread: “We have officially entered that phase of the year again…that dreaded time when Jeff feels obliged to drag movies or actors through mud to make his favorites prevail.

“Such predictable behavior often translates into pure BS, and the BS keeps snowballing in his head in uncontrolled fashion for weeks and weeks, until this big pile of fabricated arguments feels like pure neurotic hysteria to the innocent bystander.

“What’s that now? Murphy “exhibits aloof-zombie expression” in Oppenheimer? Jesus. Act dilligently and put yourself together, man. There’s a big difference between speaking one’s mind and spurting a stream of stupidities so heinous that you should turn blue in the face.

“Look, Giamatti got robbed for Sideways — I can relate to that. He may be good in The Holdovers and that movie may be one of the best of the year — no problem with that. But any way you spin it, The Holdovers will remain a small movie. Whereas Murphy carries a generational, pure-event movie alone for three hours. The two performances don’t belong to the same conversation.”

HE to freeek #1: You can say that again!

HE to freeek #2: Re-read my takedown campaign articles from five, ten or twenty years ago. They may have sounded a bit extreme in dweeb circles, but what I was saying was actually spot-on.

Alien Andronicus Oppenheimer succumbs to trademark space-cadet stare.