HE is soliciting opinions about South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who’s just announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. He’s seems like a decent human being and far less psychotic (if he’s psychotic at all) than Orange Psycho, but to me he lacks a certain charismatic magnetism that we all want from a presidential candidates — the stuff that Barack Obama had in abundance.
I’m sorry but there’s something about Scott that says “game show host” or “Orange County preacher” or “high-school basketballcoach.” He has a vaguely gurgly, not-deep-enough voice that lacks the right kind of diction. Something in his vibe seems a little more huckterish than most of us might prefer. A little less eloquent than preferred, perhaps a little too goading. I liked Jim Brown, George Foreman and Harry Belafonte‘s shaved bald heads but I don’t care for Scott’s. His head is shaped like half of a bowling ball.
Meanwhile the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis has just launched, but it might already be finished.
I’m presuming that this recently posted N.Y. Times want ad for a full-time senior film critic slot (i.e., an invitation for qualified persons to apply) is essentially bullshit. They have a pretty good idea who they’re going to hire, I’m guessing, and it won’t be some sensible centrist type with amiable popcorn tastes. They almost certainly want a woke Maoist. The ad is about Times management needing to demonstrate that they’re an equal opportunity employer.
I wonder if this means that Wesley Morris has passed on the job?
Update: I’m told that the ad isn’t entirely bullshit as the Times hasn’t yet hired a replacement.
...aren't the things you did wrong, but the things you didn't do. These are the things that will surely haunt your soul into eternity.
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I’m sorry but the two dance numbers in this clip from You’ll Never Get Rich are magnificent…pure joy. Not to mention the boogie piano.
Sometime in early 1941, the 22 year-old Rita Hayworth costarred with Fred Astaire in this film, which is commonly described as a “wartime” comedy even though the U.S. wasn’t in a war until the attack on Pearl Harbor (12.7.41) and didn’t go to war against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy until early ’43. The most you could say was that the country was on a wartime footing with very first peacetime draft in U.S. history having been enacted on 9.6.40.
On 8.11.41, the famous bedroom bodice photo of Hayworth was featured in an iconic LIFE magazine spread. (The photographer was Bob Landry.) You’ll Never Get Rich opened six weeks later on 9.25.41. Hayworth’s performance as headstrong dancer Sheila Winthrop was her first starring role.
Born on 10.17.18, Hayworth was 22 when the film was released. Astaire was 42.
Co-authored by the highly esteemed Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Lovia Gyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer, the piece highlights several brilliant, important, well-chosen films, but for the most part it’s a DEI checklist roster…the same kind of diverse balancing act assessment that N.Y. Times critics A.O. Scott and and Manohla Dargis began to be associated with starting about five years ago….gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…gay, Black, women, Asian + steer clear of any white male influence whenever possible…wash, rinse, repeat.
The key question must always be, “If you discount the DEI aspect, how good are these films on their own bare-bones merit?”
Most of these critics understand this is a fair way to winnow and select, but they’re fearful of not doing the DEI dance because doing so could be interpreted as exclusionary, elitist, racist or old-schoolish. In the old days (i.e., before 2017) such lists were sometimes driven by attempts to reckon with the best-of-the-best based on purely cinematic, dramatic, daring or transcendent, soul-drilling terms. Now it’s all about identity politics and Twitter and terror…about being afraid to say what they really think because this might get them into trouble or cause some kind of ruckus. They know this deep down but will never admit it.
Here’s what they chose (HE agreement in boldface)…HE enthusiastically approves of 12THR picks:
Bottom 25: Weekend (fine), Black Panther (gimme a break!), Time (difficult incarceration story), Bright Star (Jane Campion, John Keats, Fanny Brawne), Pariah (Dee Rees, Brooklyn lesbian saga), Bridesmaids (culturally important but not really good enough to make a serious “creme de la creme” list), Things to Come (Mia Hansen Love, Isabelle Huppert), Grizzly Man (great Herzog), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (weak tea abortion saga), Pan’s Labyrinth (top-tier GDT), Summer of Soul (found-footage POC concert doc…stirring as far as it goes), I Am Not Your Negro (gripping James Baldwin doc), Children of Men (brilliant, classic), Wendy and Lucy (good but basically a sop to the Reichart cult), Lover’s Rock (not the best of the five Small Axe films — the best is Mangrove), The Favourite (good Yorgos Lanthimos costumer but calm down), The Social Network (brilliant), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (blistering lesbian romance, emotional wipe-out), The Return (I’m more enamored of Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan), Manchester by the Sea (grand slam), Marie Antoinette (please!), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romanian classic), A Serious Man (magnificent defeatism, peak Coen Bros.), At Berkeley (Wiseman tribute doc), Y Tu Mamá También (classic Cuaron but “unbearably poignant”?). HE approval tally: 6.
Top 25: Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino’s landmark romance), Timbuktu (Islamic nutters), 35 Shots of Rum (calm down), Before Sunset (not the best of Linklater’s relationship trilogy — that would be Before Midnight), Parasite (good but overrated — collapses when drunk con artists let the maid in and thereby ruin their whole con), Far From Heaven (commendable but overpraised Sirk tribute), Drive My Car (too long, too many cigarettes, exhausting, runs out of gas), Shoplifters (under-energized, over-praised), Talk to Her (magnificent Almodovar), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (fine), The Power of the Dog (no way in hell does this punishing slog of a film belong on this list), Wall-E (okay), Burning (corrosive and hard-hitting, but overlong and sluggish), Moonlight (way overpraised due to weak third act + too-muscular Trevante Rhodes, but Barry Jenkins‘ depiction of a world-class handjob on a beach will be long remembered), Boyhood (exceptional stunt film), Get Out (racially stamped Ira Levin zombie spooker…possibly the most overpraised film of the 21st Century), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (brilliant), In the Mood for Love (understated, appropriately respected romance, considerably aided by Chris Doyle‘s cinematography), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee‘s timeless classic about letting love slip away), Spirited Away (fine), Mulholland Drive (take away the spookiness and perversity and what’s left?), Zodiac (drop-dead brilliant investigation of an endlessly fascinating cold case), The Gleaners and I (never saw it), Inside Llewyn Davis (another serving of world-class downerism from the Coens) and Yi Yi (ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen it). HE approval tally: 6.
Variety‘s Brent Lang is reporting that Air has a two-day tally of “just under” $6 million, having earned $2.4 million yesterday (Thursday, 4.6) and $3.2 million on Wednesday, 4.4. To me that sounds more like “just over $5.5 million” than “just under $6 million.” but whatever.
Pic is expected to finish with $16 million as of Sunday night. It opened in 3500 theatres and has, so far, a per-screen average of $939 or something close to that.
Air cost $90 million to produce, but it sure doesn’t look it. It looks like a $45 million movie, if that. It’s 85% to 90% interiors (Nike Beaverton offices, Chris Messina‘s agent office, bar/restaurants, a 7/11 store, Matt Damon‘s home) plus some Beaverton exteriors, some roadways and a simulation of a Wilmington, North Carolina neighborhood plus the Jordan backyard.
Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “For the type of feel-good, inspirational, star-driven dramedy this is, many in town are rooting for this movie to do well. For if Air can leg out, it provides hope to motion picture studios for the types of movies that can work post-pandemic.”
The likely truth is that the Super Mario Bros. morons are sensing or smelling a “dad movie,” and they’re obviously not breaking the doors down to see Air. Plus three out of five Air viewers so far have been male (“59%” male, according to D’Alessandro) which means a fair percentage of women are either being dragged to it or quietly deciding to wait for streaming.
Friendo: “I don’t think anyone will dare report that this is any kind of bomb. There’s too much at stake.” HE to friendo: “It’s not a bomb — it’s just performing modestly. It was never going to be a runaway hit. What matters — this is a huge factor — is that it delivers spiritual uplift.”
Sometimes in the science of Oscarology it takes a few years to understand the political reasons (for all Oscar triumphs are political) behind this or that winner snagging a trophy.
Take the Moonlightwin, for example. Thanks to Spike Lee’s refreshingfrankness, we can now safely assume that the deciding factor behind Barry Jenkins’ film beating La La Land was about Academy members being able to tell themselves that #OscarsSoWhite had been squarely faced and responsibly negated.
But in the days following the 2.26.17Oscartelecast, many were saying “of course!…ofcourse Moonlight was obviouslybetter than La La Land!…on top of which it was wrong for a white guy to love jazz.”
I didn’t feel that way, but the mob was on a roll.
“One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. Moonlight is simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.
“As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed ‘affection and accolades but no Oscar cigar,’ it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knewthat. Everyone did.
“So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it.**
“I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher. And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong.
“As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.”
** It wasn’t safe to say that Moonlight ‘s win was about Academy members covering their ass untilLeesaidthison6.21.17. After that it was olly-olly-in-come-free.
This makes her the first Republican to challenge a certain bloated sociopathic mob boss, who may or may not emerge triumphant in the ’24 Republican primaries but hasn’t the slightest chance of defeating President Joe Biden in the general election.
Even with a majority of Americans persuaded that Biden is too old for a second White House term, Donald Trump‘s criminal record and sociopathic compulsions will prove a strict no-go. Which means there’s a half-reasonable chance that Haley or Florida governor Ron DeSantis (if and when he announces) could prevail.
And yet Haley has shown over the last couple of years that she’s a Trump toady, or at least is willing to sound like one, and is hence saddled with the appearance of an ethical problem. A case against her has been laid out by Stuart Stevens, a former Republican political consultant who worked on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. The essay is titled “Nikki Haley Threw It All Away.” Here’s a taste:
“As governor, Haley’s defining action was signing legislation removing the Confederate flag from the State Capitol. This came after the horrific massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and after social media photos surfaced of the murderer holding Confederate flags. Ms. Haley compared the pain South Carolina Black people felt to the pain she experienced when, as a young girl named Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, she saw her immigrant father racially profiled as a potential thief at a store in Columbia.
“‘Iremember how bad that felt,’ Ms. Haley told CNN in 2015. ‘That produce stand is still there, and every time I drive by it, I still feel that pain. I realized that that Confederate flag was the same pain that so many people were feeling.’
“Then came Donald ‘you had some very fine people on both sides’ Trump, and by 2019 Ms. Haley was defending the Confederate flag. In an interview that December, Ms. Haley told the conservative radio host Glenn Beck that the Charleston church shooter had ‘hijacked’ the Confederate flag and that ‘people saw it as service, sacrifice and heritage.’
“In her 2019 book, ‘With All Due Respect,’ Ms. Haley mentions Mr. Trump 163 times, overwhelmingly complimentary. In one lengthy passage, she insists that she was not referencing him in her 2016 Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, when she called on Americans to resist ’the siren call of the angriest voices.’
“It is always sad to see politicians lack the courage to say what should be said, but sadder still to see them speak up and later argue any courageous intent was misinterpreted.
“It didn’t have to be this way. No one forced Ms. Haley to accept Mr. Trump after he bragged about assaulting women in the Access Hollywood tape. No one forced her to defend the Confederate flag. No one forced her to assert Mr. Trump had ‘lost any sort of political viability’ not long after the Capitol riot, then reverse herself, saying she ‘would not run if President Trump ran,’ then prepare to challenge Mr. Trump in the primary.
“There is nothing new or novel about an ambitious politician engaging in transactional politics, but that’s a rare trifecta of flip-flop-flip.”
Every now and then a “people’s movie” comes along…a movie that critics don’t get or even disparage, but which Hollywood Elsewhere surprisingly enjoys along with Joe and Jane…let’s make it Jane Popcorn in this instance. Green Book (mostly shat upon by the woke know-it-alls) was a people’s movie; ditto Bohemian Rhapsody. And now Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike’s Last Dance — partially pissed upon by critics but reportedly really enjoyed by women and gays, hence the current theatrical release rather than straight-to-streaming.
If you assess it as a full package, as a 112-minute movie with a beginning, middle and end, Magic Mike’s last Dance is one-fourth euphoric and three-fourths mezzo-mezzo. The very beginning (totally buffed Channing Tatum, 41, doing a lap dance for Salma Hayek, 55) is genuinely hot, and the ending (a big erotic dance finale at a small London theatre featuring Tatum and 10 or 12 gifted washboard abs slink dancer-grinders) is so good it borders on the transcendent. I mean that.
Don’t worry about the in-and-out middle section in London, which takes up 70 or 75 minutes. Some of it drags, and some of it is okay. All that matters, trust me, is the opening and the ending.
This is going to sound gay but these two sections are so pulse-quickening that I felt stirrings…you know what I mean. Not actual wood due to the overwhelming focus on hot male bods but…well, ’nuff said.
Here’s what I texted to a friend after I emerged from last night’s screening:
“The erotic dancing is Magic Mike’s Last Dance, and I mean especially the shirtless, slinky-bod, dry hump stuff, is magnificent. Part ballet, part breakdance, part Nijinsky and Nureyev, part early ’50s Gene Kelly, part erotic WestSideStory, part strip clup, part Babes In Arms…classier and more artified than the last two Magic Mike flicks, but when it gets going it’s really wild!
“The movie itself is somewhere between okay, pretty good and half-decent in an occasionally cliched (I’m not kidding about the Babes in Arms analogy), shuffling along, on-the-nose way. But if I’ve ever seen a turn-on movie for over-40 and even over-50 women, this is the puppy.”
CBC’s Eli Glasner: “If dry-humping was an art form, Channing Tatum would be Pablo Picasso.”
The dance-sex in this film is a much bigger turn-on than the suggested or simulated sex in Emma Thompson‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande…I’m telling you.
Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin are to be commended for investing in a romantic relationship between a 41 year-old guy (Tatum) and a 55 year-old woman (Hayek) — a difference of 14 years. Not as much as the 24 years separating French president Emmanuel Macron (born in ’77) and his wife Brigitte Trogneux (born in ’53), but residing in that general ballpark.
British actor Ayub Khan Din — best known for starring in Hanif Kureishi‘s Sammie and Rosie Get Laid — plays Hayek’s burly, bearded chauffeur. I was kind of shocked when I realized it was the same guy from Sammy and Rosie, which was 35 (going on 36) years ago. Din has put on at least 40 or 50 pounds, and his hair is almost completely silver, not to mention the beard.
Soderbergh shot Magic Mike’s Last Dance under his usual moniker of “Peter Andrews,” but it has to be said that a good portion of it (not the stage-dance scenes or the early lapdance sequence) looks muddy and subdued and generally underlighted. It reminded me of the work of my least-favorite cinematographer, Bradford Young.
“Don’t tell me what it’s all about / ‘Cause I’ve been there and I’m glad I’m out / Out of those chains those chains that bind you / That is why I’m here to remind you…”
Between the mid to late 60s the late Burt Bacharach and his partner Hal David (also no longer with us) were well established as composers of light romantic pop tunes…light but sophisticated and even complex.
Bacharach experienced four significant career surges. One, when he became Marlene Dietrich‘s arranger (and apparently her lover) in the mid ’50s. Two, when director George Roy Hill decided to ignore classic narrative tradition by inserting a contemporary music video (“Raindrops Are Falling on My head”) into Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (’69). Three, his early to mid ’80s surge when he was partnered with wife Carole Bayer Sager (cowriting “Arthur’s Theme”, “Heartlight”, “Making Love”, “That’s What Friends Are For”). And four, when Elvis Costello saved Bacharach from a fatal association with boomer schmaltz with the Grammy-winning Painted From Memory (’98), which Bacharach co-wrote with Costello.
Do the vast majority of Millennials and Zoomers even know who Bacharach was? Or who Elvis Costello is? Of course they don’t.
Bacharach’s 15-year marriage to Angie Dickinson (his second, ’65 to ’80) must have been sensually wonderful. In ’77 they had a daughter, Nikki, who sadly took her own life in ’07. From ’82 to ’91 Bacharach was married to Sager, his musical soul mate. He married his fourth wife, Jane Hansen, in ’93. Together they had two kids, Oliver and Raleigh.
They built and labored and created alongside dozens of tribes and cultures, and they certainly weren’t the only ones who suffered grievously as this country gradually developed and bloomed and grew into itself…a nation of primarily European-descended immigrants (even today) and a conflicted multicultural stew.
Two and a half years ago (7.30.20) I posted a loose-shoe retort to the 1619 Project, which attempted to (a) define the U.S. of A. as an empire built upon slavery and (b) to define 1619 (when the first slaves arrived in Virginia) as this country’s primal defining event rather than the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
In the wake of Disney’s The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, which at least partly seeks to indoctrinate 5 to 7 year-olds into the theology of anti-white racism and the basically racist idea that whites are inherently evil, and with the understanding that anti-racism essentially advocates for the furtherance of more racism (i.e., defining ourselves primarily by race and the huddling of separate tribes, pride within those tribes, white against black, etc.) and with the Proud Family chant of “slaves built this country,” I’m reposting “What’s Your 1619 Beef?”
“Slavery has always been an ignominious chapter in the first 245 years of US history (1619 to 1865) and racism has stained aspects of the culture ever since, but to assert that slavery and racism (which other cultures have shamefully allowed over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes many of us as a bridge too far.
“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening and shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it…here are 40 for starters, posted in groups of 10:
1. Immigration. 2. The industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations of sweat-shop workers by wealthy elites; 3. The delusion of religion; 4. Anti-Native American racism and genocide; 5. the American Revolutionary War against the British; 6. The mid 19th Century influence of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, John Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe; 6. The vast networks of railroads; 7. Selfishness & self-interest; 8. Factories and construction; 9. The two world wars of the 20th Century; 10. Scientific innovation.
11. Native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) folk and rock; 12. American literature; 13. The influence of New York theatre and Hollywood movies; 14. 20th and 19th Century urban architecture; 15. The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry; 16. Major-league baseball (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris); 17. Family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic; 18. Fashion and the garment industry; 19. Midwestern farming and individual gardening; 20. Native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, not to mention hot dogs with mustard.
21. The shipping industry; 22. Hard work and innovation in all industries great and small; 23. John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Woody Guthrie, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen; 24. Barber shops; 25. Manual lawnmowers; 26. The auto industry; 27. Prohibition & gangsters; 28. The Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that; 29. Status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), 30. Popular music of the ’50s, ’60s and ‘70s (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Beatles and Rolling Stones, Queen).
31. Television, cable and streaming; 32. Great American universities; 33. Great historians; 34. Great journalism (including the National Lampoon and Spy magazine); 35. Great poetry; 36. Beats, hippies and post-Stonewall gay culture; 37. The anti-Vietnam War movement; 38. Pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes; 39. The late ’70s splendor of Studio 54; 40. 20th & 21st Century tech innovations (Steve Jobs).