Good Sex star Natalie Portman looks a good 10 years younger than someone born on 6.9.81. One of her costars in Lena Dunham‘s film is Role Model (aka 28 year-old Tucker Pillsbury). Two nights ago (7.28) Portman danced on-stage with Role Model at Madison Square Garden as he sang “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out“.

Last time I checked (roughly four months ago) Portman was romantically involved with Tanguy Destable, a French music industry guy wih short gray hair and a closely cropped, salt-and-pepper beard.

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Bradley Cooper‘s Is This Thing On? (Searchlight), a semi-biographical dramedy, will close the 2025 New York Film Festival with a world premiere screening on Friday, 10.10.25.

Pic is “inspired” by the early career moves of stand-up comic John Bishop, who broke into the biz in 2000 at age 34.

Bishop is called “Alex” in the film, and is played by the 55 year-old Will Arnett. Alex’s wife Tess is played by the 58 year-old Laura Dern. Cooper has directed the film as well as cowritten (with Arnett and Mark Chappell) and produced. He also plays Alex’s best friend Arnie.

Wiki excerpt: “Bishop performed stand-up comedy for the first time in Manchester in October 2000, and the following year, made it to the final of all the major new act competitions, including ‘So You Think You’re Funny’, the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards, the BBC New Comedy Awards, and the City Life North West Comedian of the Year Award, which he won.”

Posted by Matt Neglia on 7.30.25: “In a pair of galvanizing, deeply honest performances” — Neglia has apparenly seen it — “Will Arnett and Laura Dern play Alex and Tess Novak, whose marriage has reached an impasse. With amicable sorrow, the couple — parents of two young boys — mutually agree to split up.

“Yet in Cooper’s keenly observed comic drama, their separation leads to unpredictable midlife self-reckonings, most dramatically in Alex’s wild career pivot to become a confessional stand-up comedian in New York City’s West Village, where he finds new direction and camaraderie.

“This seemingly outlandish scenario — in a script by Cooper, Arnett, and Mark Chappell, inspired by the true story of British comedian John Bishop — is never played for easy laughs, while Cooper uses his penchant for naturalism to give the actors space to find their complicated centers. In his beautifully lived-in third feature following A Star Is Born and Maestro (NYFF61), Cooper confirms his dexterity for representing the complexities of human relationships, constructing a film that is both lacerating and sweet-souled, funny and tender.

“Is This Thing On? features a stacked, stellar supporting cast, including Andra Day, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Sean Hayes, Peyton Manning and Amy Sedaris, as well as charming assistance from New York stand-up standbys such as Chloe Radcliffe, Reggie Conquest and Jordan Jensen, supplying the film its downtown authenticity.”

Is Donald Trump about to cut a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell in which he either pardons her or reduces her sentence? The latter, I’m guessing.. I’m also predicting that the deal won’t be announced for at least a year, so that the quid pro quo can be “hidden”, so to speak. At that point, Maxwell will never say a word against Trump. Problem solved.

Jett: “Bring a bathing suit this weekend. Or u can borrow one of mine.”
HE: “Okay. We’re going to the Jersey shore?”
Jett: “No, pool.”
HE: “Big public pool?”
Jett: “Does it matter? We’re going to the public pool. Bring a suit.”
HE: “Just wondering about low-rent kids urinating in the pool. You know…suddenly a patch of water gets a little warmer for a bit?”
Jett: “Do u have to make everything unpleasant? We’re going to the pool with you or without you.”
HE: “I’d like to go…great. And if nature calls, I’ll climb out and hit the men’s room.”

Earlier this year the Gold Derby “experts” embarassed themselves to death by all-but-unanimously predicting that The Brutalist‘s Brady Corbet would take the Best Director Oscar. This is because the GD members are easily intimidated sheep…no balls, no moxie, no backbone or belief, no critical integrity…a certain herd instinct manifests and then “baaaahh!”

Right now 14 Gold Derby-ites are spitballing their Best Picture preferences, and wouldn’t ya just know that seven of them have Sinners at the top of their lists?

Again, the Gold Derby guys know absolutely nothing. They’re on the Sinners train solely because of the social safety factor. They’re afraid not to predict a Sinners Best Picture win or at least a Best Director nomination for Ryan Coogler.

Friendo (speaking this morning): “But a Black director has never won a Best Director Oscar…how long can this continue?” HE to friendo: “The Best Picture Oscar that went to 12 Years A Slave in 2014 was obviously owned by the great Steve McQueen. 12 Years A Slave was and is an epic, humanistic masterpiece. Sinners is an under-lighted, sex-and-blood vampire exploitation film.”

HE can think of nothing better or more glorious than to die on this hill: A Sinners Best Picture win would raise high the banner for the progressive degeneration of cinema in the 21st Century…a process of decline which began to manifest in the ’90s and has been gathering more and more steam since….oh, 2010 or thereabouts, or the year of Ironman.

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Apple has finally locked in a release date for The Lost Bus — Friday, 9.19 or a bit more than seven weeks hence.

Based on Lizzie Johnson’s “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire“.

A bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) has to navigate a bus carrying children and their teacher (America Ferrera) to safety through the 2018 Camp Fire, which became the deadliest fire in California history.

It looks and sounds pretty damn good to me (witty, urbane, self-aware plus Ethan Hwwke‘s Lorenz Hart ie obviously spot-on) but it’s been ages since it opened in Berlin and I haven’t heard of any earlybird screeings since….nothing.

Gavin, Rahm and Pete are basically agreed that all of the crazy, French terror woke crap that began to poke through in the mid teens and went totally crazy in 2020…all of that insanity has to seriously downshift if not leave the room altogether. That or Democrats are going to become a permanent minority party.

And you know who wants the woke crap to continue regardless? Black, The View-watching, over-35 lefty women. Progressive white women with ivy-league degrees and jobs, seemingly on anti-depressants or perhaps in need of same. And LGBTQs.

Which means that Democrats ARE going to become a permanent minority party. Because these demos are not going to back off even slightly.

@briantylercohen No punches pulled @Gavin Newsom ♬ original sound – briantylercohen

The Lost Generation (i.e, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Zelda Fitzgerald) were young strivers and explorers in the 1920s. But they didn’t stop being born in 1900 — figure more like 1905 or even 1910.

The Greatest Generation (i.e., suffered through the Depression in their teens, fought in WWII…Woody Guthrie, JFK, Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Alan Ladd, Frank Sinatra) began to pop out around 1912 and not 1901. Their birth era drew to a close around 1928 or thereabouts.

The name for the so-called “Silent Generation” (born between 1929 and 1945…Woody Allen, Dennis Hopper, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty) is actually the “Baby Bust” generation…born and reared as very young kids during the Depression, mid-teen puberty when WWII ended, young and hungry and fancy-free 20somethings in the ‘50s.

I am not a boomer — I am an existential X-factor Zen samurai jazzcat with no particular ties to the Woodstock generation except for my musical tastes and preferences. Otherwise I’m free of that shit.

Nobody calls them Generation Z —the common default term is Zoomers.

My granddaughter Sutton (DOB: 11.17.21) is a junior Gen Alpha.

Chris Nolan has not only shot The Odyssey entirely in full-screen (1.43:1) IMAX, but the apparent intention is to project the entire film in this boxy, super-tall aspect ratio.

Does anyone believe this? I don’t. Because it’s never happened before. Because IMAX films always wind up being projected in 1.85. Even in theatres capable of presenting a full IMAX image, it’s always a cheat. Because it’s a marketing scam. Because it’s all a lie, or has been so far.

Posted on 5.16.25:

…to Just Jared for running the first photo of a bewigged Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth in David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino‘s currently filming The Adventures of Cliff Booth (Netflix).

Pitt/Cliff appears to be wearing the same kind of yellow Hawaiian-style shirt that he wore in QT’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which in itself conveys a basically traditional / conservative attitude.

The moustache, however, is a mistake. Tens of thousands of blonde-haired guys wore these ‘staches in the ’70s in order to ape the Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mystique.

Redford‘s mustachioed gunslinger was cool but the imitators weren’t. Clean-shaven Cliff was cool in OUATIH, but now he looks dorky.

Suggestion to Fincher: Have Cliff wear a “Death To Disco” T-shirt at one point or another.

…why I was wasting my time on TikTok reactions to those Sydney Sweeney American Eagle “good genes” ads…these Clueless Clems have surely realized by now that by the early afternoon (Monday, 7.28) the entire MSM had jumped on this story also.