Daniel Craig is intending to become the first ex-007 to play a gay guy. Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan…none of them expanded their repertoire in such a fashion. But Craig will boldly go where no James Bond has gone before.

The Industry’s Jeff Sneider is reporting that Craig will star in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, an adaptation of William Burroughs’ same-titled, partly autobiographical novel that was written in the early ‘50s but not published until ‘85.

Presumably to be set in old-time Mexico City, where Burroughs himself lived in the early ‘50s, Queer may or may deal with the accidental shooting death of Burroughs’ wife, Joan Vollmer.

Roxanne Gay, a novelist, an essayist and a woman of undeniable size, is no fan of Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale (A24, limited). She’s written a harshly critical essay for the N.Y. Times called “The Cruel Spectacle of The Whale.”

I wish I could throw my two cents in, but I haven’t seen The Whale. Would it be okay if I lie by saying I’m looking forward to the experience?

Gay: “Most audiences will see the spectacle of a 600-pound man unwilling to care for himself, grieving the loss of his partner who died by suicide, eager to die himself, and using food as the means to that end. The disdain the filmmakers seem to have for their protagonist is constant, inescapable. It’s infuriating — to have all this on-screen talent and all these award-winning creators behind the camera, working to make an inhumane film about a very human being. What, exactly, is the point of that?”

I’m naturally presuming that Aronofsky disagrees with Gay’s assessment, and that he’ll probably take issue with it in some way.

Seven or eight years ago Toon Camera came along, and I paid it no mind. It may have been been refined and upgraded in the years since or not, but I know right now that Toon Camera delivers a reasonably passable version of the rotoscoping process. Obviously below the tech level of Richard Linklater‘s Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly and Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood but the conversion tech isn’t too bad. I’m also a fan of 8mmVintage Camera app.

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…than a schmuck for a lifetime.”

As it turns out, Rupert Pupkin‘s standup is moderately amusing. It certainly isn’t awful. As Pupkin explains to Jerry Langford in a fantasy sequence, his comedy is drawn from childhood currents of rage and low-self-esteem, largely due to his parents’ alcoholism and being seriously bullied at school. Pupkin’s standup, in short, has an undercurrent of reality as well as a theme. Which is surprising because everything in The King of Comedy tells you that Pupkin is a hugely irritating asshole and therefore incapable of possessing the talent, smarts and finesse necessary to be a moderately effective comedian. And at the end, that assumption is incorrect.

Hats off to director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul D. Zimmerman — they had the odd kind of balls to make a strange, fairly unlikable film that I’ve seen a good give or six times. Robert De Niro‘s performance is chalk on the blackboard — that’s the point and the pain of this film. But I truly love Jerry Lewis‘ performances as the sullen, dark-hearted talk show king.

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Apologies for hastily posting a photographic lie-slash-misrepresentation early last evening. An obvious lack of due diligence in a hurry. I was about to delete the post as I was leaving the house but the comments about alleged hiring tendencies were nonetheless interesting.

So I’m deleting the bogus photo, which seemed to indicate or represent a lack of diverse hiring practices at a certain company, and substituting some of the comments in its place.

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Performance capture shooting on Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 began simultaneously in late September of 2017 — five and one-third years ago. Live-action photography “with the principal performance capture cast” began in early ’18 and ended in November ’18 — just over four years ago. Then came live-action filming in New Zealand, beginning in the spring of ’19 and concluding on 11.29.19. On 3.17.20 shooting was postponed due to Covid; it resumed on 6.16.20 and ended sometime during September ’20. The film was really, finally, no-foolin’ completed on 11.23.22.

I’m resigned to Avatar 3 (it’s done either way) but who really wants to see Avatar 4?

Cameron on Avatar 4: “I can’t tell you the details, but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for [The Way of Water], the studio gave me three pages of notes. And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better. When I turned in the script for 4, the studio executive, the creative executive over the films, wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy fuck.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?”

The centrist Arizona Senator, 46, is looking to avoid being primaried in ’24 by a more staunchly leftist candidate. If she’s no longer in the Democratic Party (and let’s restate the obvious, which is that she’s never been an actual Democrat) she can’t be primaried — simple.

A Joe Manchin-like obstructionist and attention whore, Sinema believes that if she swings purple it will save her from a tough re-election bid. “Arizona values”…bullshit. She’s trying to sell leaving the Democratic camp as a matter of principle (i.e, more fruitful collaborations with both sides of aisle) and is fooling no one — this is clearly about Sinema trying to improve the chances of her own survival

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Would the AMC Lincoln Square management have the arrogance to show trailers and whatnot to viewers of next Friday’s 1:30 am show of Avatar 2: The Way of Water? Even if they start exactly on time (which theatres never do) the film would end at 4:40 am. If I emerged from this Upper West Side plex at that hour I would head over to an all-night diner and order breakfast (scrambled eggs, home fries, wheat toast, bowl of fruit). And then I’d head home and pop an Ambien.

Sasha Stone and I have leapt back into the podcast fray — Oscar Poker, Part Deux. A weekly thing with occasional extras and detours. But on Substack this time. The usual strategy applies — free at first and then paywalled. And not just anti-woke rants and whatnot.

We spoke for an hour earlier today — (a) Avatar 2 vs. other Best Picture contenders that haven’t much chance. (b) how many more years will the woke plague endure?, (c) kicking around Nat’l Board of Review winners (what happened to Tar?), (d) this weekend’s White Lotus finale, etc.

Please join us in daring to give a shit. How can Sasha and I be a little different? Is there anyone in Media/Journo/Hunger Land who isn’t podcasting?

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