If President Biden insists on wearing old-man comfort shoes, he could at least wear the all-black kind that would at least simulate the black leather Presidential footwear tradition that has been in place since the days of Abraham Lincoln if not before.
Biden’s wearing of whitesides is appalling — a symbolic degradation of the dignity of the office.
Nicolle Wallace: “Where are all of the Republicans who still have little slivers of a following in the cesspool that is the MAGA base?”
Special Trump prosecutor Jack Smith has asked a judge to place Orange Sociopath under a limited gag order for attempting to publicly intimidate potential witnesses. Smith’s filing says the “narrowly tailored” order would prevent harassment of witnesses. It seems likely that sooner or later a MAGA wacko will try something violent.
While admitting that he was absolutely randy and ravenous during his Hollywood heyday, Russell Brand is “absolutely refuting” accusations of “rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse” in a 90-minute Channel 4 documentary that will air this evening in England. The Sunday Times is reporting that Brand has been accused of sexual assault by four women between 2006 and 2013.
Band is claiming the sexual encounters were consensual; his accusers are asserting otherwise.
The reported affair between conservative South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, 51, and hair-trigger political operative Corey Lewandowski, 49, is, of course, indicative of outrageous hypocrisy.
They’re both big-time Trump supporters as well as family values proponents. Governor Noem has been married to husband Bryon since 1992. Lewandowski has been married to the former Alison Hardy (her husband was killed on 9/11 as one of the passengers on United flight 175) since 2005, and has four kids with her…four!
Then again when have big-time political players (office holders, candidates, heavyweight operatives, donors) not been hypocrites? It goes with the territory.
Most of us are familiar with the term “the heart wants what it wants.” Most of us understand that certain affairs of the heart (and the loins) can, depending on the chemistry of the participants, result in a form of insanity. I was involved in a crazy extra-marital thing a quarter-century ago. (She was the infidel — I was the unmarried “other man.”) So I know how it feels to have wings on your heels. I know what is to be seized by this kind of madness. Then again Lewandowski and Noem have reportedly been indiscreet, and that’s on them.
Noem has been on the short list of potential vice-presidential running mates alongside Donald Trump in the ’24 campaign. The reports about her thing with Lewandowski will probably kill this talk.
It’s mystifying why the Best Int’l Feature know-it-alls are so in the tank for Anatomy of a Fall, which is a good, talky and well-layered did-she-do-it? film…a smartly written marital mystery-slash-courtroom procedural. It is also, truth be told, a wee bit irksome by way of visual confinement (only two Grenoble locations — an A-frame home and a courtroom interior) and, at 150 minutes, is certainly a prolonged rear-end punisher. Plus I don’t like the kid.
Being what it is Justine Triet’s cerebral bad-marriage film naturally doesn’t try to deliver anything like the emotional-devotional contact high you get from Tran Ahn Hung’s The Pot-au-Feu, a sensual foodie bliss-out if I’ve ever sat through one. There’s no question which film is more seductive and pleasurable but the fix seems to be in all the same for Triet and Sandra Huller’s marathon talkfest.
Is it a political-gender-feminist preference thing? Is it because the feminist smarty-pants set is in the tank for Huller’s likely Best Actress nomination, which was recently proclaimed in a Hollywood Reporter cover story? (She’s also very good in Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest but her character, the wife of an Auschwitz camp commander, is subdued.) Is it because The Pot-au-Feu, directed by a Vietnamese arthouse veteran, has been tagged as too much of a sensual white gentleman’s film and therefore not cool…a film that’s not just about the devotional and spiritual worship of fine French cuisine but Benoit Magimel’s idealized, classically old-fashioned, all-consuming pedestal love for Juliette Binoche?
Should HE file the necessary papers in order to be designated the official website for the Anatomy of a Fall Int’l Takedown Campaign? I don’t really want to do this as it’s clearly an intelligent and (as far as it goes) engaging film. All I know is that THE POLITICAL FIX SEEMS TO BE IN.
A new trailer for THE POT-AU-FEU / THE TASTE OF THINGS, for which Tran Anh Hung won Best Director at this year's @Festival_Cannes. Starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel and in French cinemas November 8. pic.twitter.com/fRZhRvwxiN
— Notebook (@NotebookMUBI) September 15, 2023
…here’s an updated “friendo” interpretation of the latest WGA vs. show–runners vs. producers negotiating contretemps:
“The showrunners have had it up to here with the hardline WGA all-or-nothing rhetoric…they’ve had it!
“And so the showrunners (aka the upper echelon) are applying pressure for a deal to be made, compromises yielded, a willingness to accept 80 percent over 100 percent of the demands, etc.
“The showrunners are also pushing back against mandatory staffing and the like. They have their own selfish agenda, but their income and dues drive the guild so they cannot be dismissed.
“This confirms your HE assessments as well. Enough is enough. The solidarity in the WGA is mostly from the unemployed. Those that are flourishing and have name value are fed up.
“Meanwhile, Disney is considering selling ABC. That means even less scripted programming as linear TV dies. Writers will have better terms when the strike is over, but less opportunity.”
Note: Apart from Sean Penn’s basic, well-founded point, I would still be delighted if AI technology could somehow one day resuscitate dead movie stars and thus allow them to have second careers.
From a 9.13 Sean Penn interview with Variety‘s Stephen Rodrick: “Aggressive pop-offs are a Penn staple and not limited to global events. I ask him his thoughts on the Hollywood strikes. He is particularly livid over the studios’ purported lust for the likenesses and voices of SAG actors for future AI use.
“[Penn] has an idea that he is convinced will break the logjam. It starts with Penn and a camera crew being in a room with studio heads. Penn will then offer trade: ‘So you want my scans and voice data and all that. Okay, here’s what I think is fair: I want your daughter’s, because I want to create a virtual replica of her and invite my friends over to do whatever we want in a virtual party right now. Would you please look at the camera and tell me you think that’s cool?”
“Penn pauses long enough for me to check if he is serious. That is an affirmative.
“’It’s not about business,’ he says. ‘It’s an indecent proposal. That they would do that and not be taken to task for it is insulting. This is a real exposé on morality — a lack of morality.'”
Some people have voices that sound so steady and self-assured and velvety you almost don’t even care what they’re saying….you just want to listen to that rich timbre, those purring tones, that wonderful phrasing and diction. I’m not talking about singing voices but the simple realm of words, phrases, sentences, thoughts.
I was thinking the other day about Kamala Harris‘s profoundly annoying voice…thin, a bit raspy, no music or rhythm…and what a terrible speech-giver she is.
And this morning I was thinking about the other side of the coin — the voices of Barack Obama, Morgan Freeman, young and middle-aged Ingrid Bergman, JFK, Judi Dench, Freddie Jones, David McCullough, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Sir Ian McKellen, Lauren Bacall, Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Michael Wincott. Who else?
Time and again Steve Schmidt, a brilliant political operator and a decent human being, refuses to even mention, much less speak out against, the lemmings-over-the-cliff insanity of the censorious wokester left and their relentless emphasis upon race, sexuality and gender ideology agendas. Everything he says below about Trumpism is true and real, but if he continues to ignore hard-left lunacy he will never be the influencer that he wants to be.
Steve Schmidt: “Make no mistake about it. Donald Trump stands for revenge and retribution. Against who? His enemies. And his enemies are anybody who isn’t in line…obedient, fully…to Donald Trump. Over and over and over again, he has made this clear, and what he have now is a whole of soceity problem. Because of the crisis of cynicism and cowardice that has fully and wholly overtaken the Republican party, and the crisis of competence within the Democratic party…[and this] the party, once stamped by FDR and John Kennedy, has not yet been unable to put down this anti-American fascist movement with argument to the American people…about is indecency, its immorality and its great danger.”
I feel sorry for any guys out there who’ve never known the deep pleasure of walking around with a serious, old-fashioned, heavy-leather gun belt, holster and Shane-style six-shooter.
I’m not talking about some cheap-ass, nickel-and-dime, half-plastic gun belt and six shooter cap pistol that you might’ve worn as a kid in the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. (I don’t know when seven-year-old kids stopped pretending to be cowboys, but it was probably in the mid ’70s when Star Wars came along.) I’m talking about the kind of hand-crafted, real-deal rigs worn by Alan Ladd in Shane, Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter, John Wayne in Stagecoach and Red River, Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz, Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, etc.
I strapped on a serious western leather rig on a movie set back in the late ’70s or early ’80s (I forget the details) and I’ve never forgotten the glorious manly feeling…the smell of well-oiled leather, the weight of those iron guns, those thigh straps, those bullets tucked into the bullet holders…all of it.
“Red River D,” posted on 12.28.22:
There’s something hugely joyful about reuniting with my mail-order John Wayne Red River brass belt buckle. The fact that I’m happy to once again have it in my possession means, of course, that I’m just as much of a racist swine as Wayne was during his lifespan, and has nothing to do with my loving the 1948 Howard Hawks western (which, as the buckle points out, was actually shot in ‘46).
Anyone familiar with the famous jail-cell scene in Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro‘s Raging Bull knows something about irony. For watching a crude and bestial man experience the absolute nadir of his bruising (and bruise-dispensing) life…his explosive acting out of feelings of absolute and overpowering self-loathing…this horrific episode results, for viewers, in something oddly cleansing and almost therapeutic.
This was DeNiro’s all-time peak moment…the kind of bravura acting moment that only a young or youngish fellow can capture or deliver. It was also the grand crescendo of DeNiro’s initial glory chapter (’73 to ’80), the highlights of which were Bang the Drum Slowly, Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, 1900 and Taxi Driver.
Chapter Two began right after Raging Bull and continues until this day — The King of Comedy (’82), Once Upon a Time in America (’84), Brazil (’85), Midnight Run (’88), Goodfellas (’90), This Boy’s Life (’93), Heat (’95), Casino (’95), Analyze This (’99), the Meet the Parents films (2000–2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Intern (’15) and The Irishman (’19).
If you start with Brian DePalma‘s Greetings (’68), DeNiro has been at it for 55 years.
