Lupita Nyong’o is 43, not “46.” She was born on 3.1.83, and is simply not ravishing enough to trigger a war. At best she’s a MILF. She’s certainly no Rosanna Podesta.
This horse has to be whipped flayed BEATEN to death.
@undertheduvet.pod Do you like the casting decision of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey? #lupitanyongo #christophernolan #theodyssey #helenoftroy #podcastshow ♬ original sound – Under the Duvet
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In A24’s view, the cultural foot-draggers and wealthy suburban none-too-hips are finally ready to sit down this weekend and grapple with the bruising traumatic shock of Olivia Wilde‘s The Invite, which I saw and reviewed two weeks ago.
Imagine browsing your weekend film choices and saying to yourself “hmmm…isn’t The Invite about wife-swapping, and is maybe a little Virginia Wolff-y? Let’s go for Gail Daughtry whatever, something lighter and goofier…okay, empty-headed…I don’t want to be challenged.”
Imagine being this person. Imagine the emptiness within.
My unerring nose for quality fare led me to be strangely ignorant of Scott Ryan‘s Mr. Inbetween over the last eight years. Call me an idiot…go right ahead. This FX series premiered on 9.25.18. Mr. Inbetween was a serialisation of The Magician (2005), which was created, written by and starred Ryan. Ryan reprised the role for the series and was also the writer; it was directed by Nash Edgerton.
I somehow managed to not lock into Rob Edwards until this morning.
Edwards has been happening in clubs for two or three years. From Memphis, and before that Hayward. (Or is it the other way around?) 15 seconds into his “I’m anti-social” riff, I was saying “I love this guy…make him a movie star.”
Graham Platner surely knows that Jenny Racicot‘s recollection of that fateful night in 2021 is, at the very least, mostly accurate. He apparently believes that his own behavior that night wasn’t…what’s the correct term?…that it wasn’t classically assaultive or rapey or what-have-you, and that his decision to suspend his campaign isn’t a moralistic admission but a strategic call. He’s bailing, he’s said, because the mainstream Democratic machine is unified against his candidacy. He’s not done because of what Pacicot claims, he’s asserting, but because their opposition to his candidacy is absolute. Such a curious declaration. Odd.
HE to Correcting Jeff, who called Platner a loser:
Stop it with your falsetto-voiced, pearl-clutching, candy-assed condescension. Graham Platner is not some deplorable loser. A liar or a denialist perhaps**, but his boozy, PTSD-ish, clearly tragic sexual history aside, Platner is (or certainly was) a truly charismatic prole — a phenomenal, X-factor political star — a working class Mainer who’d really broken through and connected with average voters up there.
Before the fatal Jenny Racicot and Cheyenne Hunt torpedo came along, his non-wealthy, salt-of-the-earth supporters saw him as one of their own. Those legions of female supporters didn’t see him as choice boyfriend or husband material (duhhh), but as a scruffy, plain-spoken, deep-voiced advocate they trusted to say and do and fight for the right things — a smart, feisty, articulate, anti-corporate dude who stood apart.
None of the Maine wannabes who want to take Platner’s place now (especially the beefy, pot-bellied Troy Jackson) radiate even a fraction of Platner’s special, proletariat, lightning-in-a-bottle mystique.
** show me a shrewd and scrappy political hustler who doesn’t lie or deny, or who in most cases hasn’t exhibited a voracious sexual appetite in his 20s and 30s — they all share these traits or tendencies in every country around the globe. Okay, not all of them (Richard Nixon wasn’t a sexual being but he sure as hell lied and denied) but most.
“The Watchdog” is not a blind Odyssey hater — he’s put his thoughts together in a rational, well-ordered way.
This pretty much sums up my position on the Odyssey’s casting:
It’s not only historically incorrect for the period, it is thematically incorrect: pic.twitter.com/vrEdV12ZHA
— The Watchdog (@TheWatchdogDBQ) July 7, 2026
Director-writer Dylan Meyer is the daughter of Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, The Day After) and the late Lauren Meyer.
I knew Lauren slightly when we both worked at the Hollywood Reporter in ’83 and ’84. She died of breast cancer in ’91, when Dylan was around five.
Actual overheard Nicholas Meyer line about producer Stephen J. Friedman: “We had creative differences. I was creative and he was different.”
I haven’t thought about Alia Shawkat for a good six years, or since she was palling around with Brad Pitt.
Every so often I’m seized with tearful melancholy over the death of the big-studio, middle-class dramedy (not a “comedy” but flavored with acrid, low-key guy humor) with big-name actors.
This kind of film began to die 25 or 30 years ago, and is all but absent now. But not entirely because a very close relation, Martin McDonagh‘s Wild Horse Nine (Searchlight, 11.6), will open later this year. I couldn’t be happier about its imminent arrival, and particularly the Venice Film Festival debut seven weeks hence.
Posted on 3.4.19: Frank Milo is a tough Chicago loan shark, but is also a lot like Bill Murray in many ways, just not internally. He’s angry and doesn’t really like himself or his friends or his life. He wants to be somewhere else. He’s seeing a therapist to try and deal with the hostility, and he performs a stand-up comedy routine at a place called the Kamikaze Club, which he owns. But he doesn’t want to lose the gangster life either.
Frank and Wayne’s connection begins when Wayne — joshingly called “Mad Dog” by his cop pals — saves Frank’s life during a grocery store holdup by calming down a jittery holdup man and sending him away without bloodshed.
Frank is initially appalled (“You’re a cop?”), but the next evening, realizing what Wayne actually did and starved for a friend, Frank tries to reciprocate by getting friendly over drinks. The next day he sends Glory, who works at the Kamikaze Club, over to Wayne’s place, the idea being for her to stay with him and take care of whatever for seven days.
The wrinkle comes when Wayne and Glory fall in love, and Wayne decides he doesn’t want her being Frank’s “favor girl” any longer. But Frank won’t let her go (Glory has offered her services in order to save her brother from being killed over a debt) unless Wayne coughs up $40K…fat chance.
The theme of the film is, basically, “no guts, no glory.” That sounds like macho crap, but it’s well sold.
I don’t know where Price’s script ends and Murray’s improvs begin, but Mad Dog and Glory is full of little Murray doo-dads. There’s his lounge-lizard rendition of “Knock Three Times,” crooned at the beginning of a tense scene. His addressing De Niro as “ossifer” (a term I hadn’t heard since I was a kid in New Jersey). The way he holds an air bugle to his lips and does a cavalry-charge bugle sound when De Niro’s cop friends come to his rescue at the finale.
There’s a scene in a diner in which Frank’s intellectually challenged top goon, Harold (Mike Starr), who’s sitting nearby with a supermarket tabloid, points at a middle-aged man sitting at the counter and whispers to Milo, “Hey, Frank? Isn’t that Phil Donahue?” A shot of the guy in question proves otherwise. Murray half turns in his seat and says, “Put the magazine down, Harold, before you hurt yourself.”
Consider the melancholy in Murray’s eyes after his fight scene with De Niro at the finish. This is a bright, sometimes funny guy who wants out and knows he won’t get there. He pulls a loose tooth out of his mouth, gestures at the gaudy Cadillac he’s sitting in and the gorillas he’s riding with, and says with a look of pure disgust, “This is my life .”
And Caruso’s Mike is his best feature-film riff ever. Mike is a sarcastic hardass, but a good man and loyal to the end. He has a bravura scene in which he faces down a bigger guy in a bar over a domestic abuse issue (the basher is another cop) and makes him back off. It’s a total classic. You can see why he had a lot of heat coming off this.
The film also has a couple of great Louis Prima tracks (“Just a Gigolo,” “That Old Black Magic”) that turned me into a fan.
Wayne: It’s the first time I pulled out my gun in 15 years. I pissed on myself.
Mike: You know why? Because you’re a sensitive, intelligent indivdual.
Wayne: You ever piss yourself?
Mike: Look, I woulda walked in there and drilled the rat-eyed little bastard, and that’s just the way I am. On the other hand, if I ever had an intelligent thought it would die of loneliness so it all evens out, you know what I mean? (pause) Look, if it ever happens again…? The best thing is sex. You’re all adrenalized? You go off like a rocket. If it was me, I’d be on the phone with every girl I knew [that] wasn’t related by blood. Listen, don’t kid yourself — that was balls-up what you last night.
Hardscrabble adults who’ve rough and tumbled and know a bit of the world…grown players understand that in the annals of power and politics, persons of principle and conviction are sometimes unfortunately forced to choose between two less-than-ideal outcomes….not good vs. even worse…sometimes you have to suck it up and pick.
Barring a miracle, whichever Democrat steps into the Platner breach is almost certain to lose against Susan Collins. Because there’s no one in the wings with any of that Platner proletariat mystique, his glaring personal faults notwithstanding. For better or worse, Cheyenne Hunt essentially did this.
This Bananas scene was filmed in mid-1970. The film was released on 4.28.71, or a bit more than 55 years ago. And it’s age-restricted! Presumably because of the footage of nudie-magazine covers.
Question: The yellow note pasted to the cover of National Review is too blurry to read. (The clip is, I mean.) Does anyone remember it? Undoubtedly a putdown of William F. Buckley and pro-Nixon conservatism, but what was the gag?
Yes, it’s provable — five weeks ago an automatically triggered guilt mechanism hit me with two speeding tickets in the space of three minutes. $50 per offense. 38 mph and 39 mph in a 25 mph zone. Anyone who drives around knows that 35 mph or 40 mph is nothing. Bicycle riders go this fast without blinking an eye, and it doesn’t matter. But it does. In a certain Bronx neighborhood 38 mph and 39 mph constitutes “speeding.”
The eternally cool Elliot Page is allegedly 5’1″, or 61 inches tall. He looks a bit shorter here. I remember when I hit the five-foot mark, when I was nine or ten. At full maturity the late Kenny Baker stood 44 inches tall, or 17 inches shorter than Page. If I were Chris Nolan during filming of The Odyssey, I would have tried to make Page seem a bit taller, using this or that framing or optical strategy. Because he looks too slight here (sorry).
After viewing this video, I very much doubt Page will be shown walking in The Odyssey. pic.twitter.com/UQBH4xdRjm
— Gay Not Queer (@Gaynotqueer1) July 7, 2026
