Straight from the shoulder and no bullshit: Is there anyone in the HE community who feels strongly about seeing or not seeing Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis this weekend?
If it’s a must-see, what’s the main factor driving that notion? And if it’s a meh, why do you feel that way?
You may have heard that Elvis underperformed last night and that it may finish the weekend with less than $20 million, which may translate into a third or even (God forbid) a fourth-place showing.
I’ll tell you what I’m feeling, and that’s a pre-West Side Story vibe because (a) 40-and-younger types don’t care that much about E.P., (b) the numbers will depend on whatever ticket-buying enthusiasm may happen among GenX and more particularly boomers, and don’t forget that (c) Elvis’s core fan base (those in their tweener and teen years when he first ignited) are older boomers plus the baby-bust generation.
I really and truly hope that Elvis (which I was half-okay with after seeing it in Cannes) does better than West Side Story. I don’t want to see it tank.
My mind is reeling with the knowledge that with the termination of Roe vs. Wade made official, enormous waves of trauma and pain and grief will sweep across the country.
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…that there are accomplished, seemingly intelligent film obsessives who are actually persuaded that in Alexander Payne’s Election, Matthew Broderick’s high-school teacher is the villain and Reese Witherspoon’s Tracey Flick is…what, driven and misunderstood but essentially a decent soul?
Broderick’s character is a more-or-less moral fellow with weaknesses (extra-marital lust, loathing for Tracey Flick types, not smart enough to destroy that ballot instead of toss it into a waste basket). But Flick is Richard Nixon, for God’s sake. I’ve known screwed-down, hissy-fit Tracey Flick types all my life…’nuff said.
“Determined Little Sociopath,” Posted on 9.20.17: What was it about Election, exactly, that turned so many people off? Alexander Payne‘s brilliant, perfectly shaped black comedy cost $25 million (just shy of $37 million in 2017 dollars) to make, and it only earned a lousy $14.9 million (or nearly $22 million by today’s calculator). Something in this film irritated a large swath of the public, obviously, but what in particular? The reviews couldn’t have been better, but outside of some modest action in the cities Joe and Jane Popcorn just wouldn’t go.
I’ve long suspected that on some deep-seated level Jane didn’t care for the demonizing of Reese Witherspoon‘s Tracy Flick, who always struck me as a female Richard Nixon type — resentful, craven.
The irony, of course, is that Witherspoon will probably never luck into a role as good again. It enabled her to give her very best performance. Certainly her most memorable, in part because she wasn’t “acting” — Tracy Flick is inside Witherspoon as surely as Tom Dunson and Ethan Edwards were inside John Wayne. Tracy Flick was lightning in a bottle, and that stuff doesn’t grow on trees. Criterion’s Election Bluray will pop on 12.12.17.
Posted on 3.21.20, just as Covid-19 was manifesting big-time and pandemic consciousness was generating widespread depression: If it's all the same Hollywood Elsewhere would like to move to Tahiti for two or three months, just for the privilege of walking around without a mask or surgical gloves. To the best of my knowledge only one native -- French Polynesian politician Maina Sage -- has been infected, and that it's pretty much a clean-slate territory. Imagine the joy of just living without the terror.
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Presenting five fine fellows who once lived at 948 14th Street in Santa Monica. The orchestrator is the illustrious Ed Roach (far left), longtime Beach Boys photographer. Two possibilities: (1) Pic used to be in color but has faded to pink or (2) Ed shot it in black-and-white and decided to pink it up.
The Victorian home of the late Pauline Kael, located on a grand hill in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The place is quite huge — not quite the size of Cecil B. DeMille’s Los Feliz mansion, but in that general ballpark or so it seemed — and the sloping grounds are well-groomed and shrouded with many trees, and surrounded by a black iron fence. Most critics and columnists live in modest spartan abodes. But what is life without exceptions?
Quoting; “The new University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll released on Wednesday found Ron DeSantis receiving 39 percent support from likely Republican primary voters in the state compared to 37 percent for Donald Trump.
“The difference between the two is insignificant and within the poll’s margin of error, meaning they are effectively tied at the top.
“But it’s a significant rise for DeSantis. In previous polling conducted by the university, DeSantis had been trailing behind Trump, receiving 19 percent support in July 2021 and 18 percent in October 2021. Trump, in contrast, had won 47 percent and 43 percent support, respectively, in those previous polls.
“’Trump slipping in pre-primary polls is part of a typical pattern,’ Director of the UNH Survey Center Andrew Smith said in a statement.
“’A party’s losing candidate in the prior election is typically the best-known person in their party. As the primary gets closer, new candidates emerge and attract more media attention, and therefore more voter attention, than the losing candidate from the previous election,’ he added.”
I am Rosemary, the infant is what’s become of a once-noble tradition of liberalism and a concurrent personification of the present-tense lunatic left, the “hail Satan” enthusiasts are wokester converts, etc.
Seriously…that’s me right there…dropping the knife on the floor, collapsing into a chair and wailing “oh God!!!”
Otessa Moshfegh‘s Brad Pitt profile in the new GQ (“Brad Pitt’s Wildest Dreams“) is my idea of first-rate. Perceptive, well sculpted, pocket-drop prose, satisfactory, etc.
But the photos by Elizaveta Porodina convey…I don’t know what the hell they convey. Some kind of late David Bowie persona with hints or echoes of the Thin White Duke, and perhaps blended with an older version of Helmut Berger in Visconti’s The Damned.
Pitt’s thinking about the photos, I’m guessing, is something along the lines of “you have to experiment and try for something else…I can’t just be Cliff in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood for the rest of my life…that’s lazy…let’s try this Siegfried and Roy meets ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ thing on for size and see where it takes us.”
The article is an early promotional salvo for David Leitch‘s Bullet Train (Sony, 8.5), an ultra-violent cartoon aboard a Japanese bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto. To go by the trailers, pic is seemingly aimed at the ADD yokels who didn’t like Watcher. Pitt plays a “seasoned but unlucky” assassin named Ladybug.
The Tokyo-Kyoto trip itself takes around 160 minutes minutes; the film lasts 153 minutes.
One-third of the Joe and Jane Popcorn crowd doesn’t like Watcher? Not the movie’s fault in the slightest — it’s their problem.
HE approves of this unofficial Watcher poster from Chloe Okuno…grade-A, haunting in exactly the right way & summoning the right Maika Monroe mood, etc.
DataLounge, the greatest, funniest and most nourishing gay gossip site on the entire planet, is 27 years old, and glory hallelujah.
I don’t know how large the readership is, but I love that DL is part of the conversation, and especially that the commenters don’t filter themselves. Because when it comes to judging or challenging sacred-cow narratives in the universe of woke (yes!), they’re protected by their identity.
Straight white guys have to phrase carefully and watch their backs, but gay guys (especially under the cloak of DL anonymity) don’t give a toss.
Read their recent Bradley Cooper comments…merciless here and there. And their remarks about Brad Pitt‘s new GQ cover, etc.
6.22 thread titled “Congratulations to all the trannies out there for ruining everything for us” — “You took our organizations. You took our pride festivals. You took our progress and reversed it. Now the right wing is coming after us because you had to use women’s restrooms and go after little boys with your puberty blockers. We are eternally grateful.”
6.22 thread titled “When did we decide that the word ‘progressive’ is synonymous with ‘insane?’”
“It used to be that progressives would champion causes like women’s suffrage, civil rights, ending discrimination against racial minorities and gays,
enacting laws to protect women and children against abuse.
“But today, it seems like the only things progressives care about are these psychotic, whacked out initiatives like designer pronouns, allowing transvestites into women’s restrooms, and transitioning little boys into little girls.
“What happened?
“So if you’re a man who wants to be a woman, you can take hormones, get breast implants, and have an operation to mangle your penis, and then you get to forcibly shame everyone else into pretending that you’re a woman?
“If you’re a dumb teenager who wants to feel special, you can adopt some stupid pronouns and then forcibly shame everyone else into pretending your invented gender is real?
“How is this progress?”
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