Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
September 25, 2024
I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
September 25, 2024
Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
September 25, 2024
Is it really possible that a majority of voters will vote to put a deranged rightwing dog from hell…a bloated, fact-averse psychopath back in the White House in ’24? Even if Trump doesn’t win the popular vote, we know he’ll claim victory regardless, and then the same bullshit strategy — challenging vote totals, claiming fraud, “our country is being stolen” etc. — will kick in.
Except this time there will be fewer Brad Raffensberger types left to say no to Trump when he asks them to invalidate this or that state’s vote count. Right now and on a state-by-state basis, Trump is doing everything he can to fix things so that a ’24 Trump coup will succeed. There’s no disputing that. It’s going to happen.
What phrase comes to mind when you think of Justin Bieber, who’s married and 27? The phrase that comes to my mind (and I acknowledge it’s not as current as it could be) is “obnoxious party animal to whom much wealth and media attention have been given.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve despised the idea of Bieber from the get-go (i.e., the start of the Obama administration). Here we are 11 years later, and his name still does the trick.
The gist of “Ghost,” a just-released Bieber song, is that Justin misses his smiling, recently deceased grandfather “more than life.” And so he chooses to celebrate the fragile, all-too-briefly-enjoyed gift of life with his hat-wearing, Tom Ford-glasses-wearing grandma, played by Diane Keaton.
Has a grandson ever melted down this much over the death of a grandparent? If there’s one thing that was drilled into my early childhood, it was the unfortunate fact that grandparents pass on sooner rather than later as a rule. Even the most naive grandsons are acquainted with this sad inevitability, and generally respond with a nodding acceptance.
I’ve never once heard or read about a grandson being, like, gutslammed and shattered to pieces by the passing of a grandparent. Saddened and grief-struck but not decimated. It hurts but you know it’s coming, like leaves turning yellow and falling from trees.
Three things have stuck in my mind about the late HughO’Brian, the Life and LegendofWyattEarp TV star who passed five years ago at age 91. I should have shown proper respect with a brief obit at the time, but at least I’m saying something now.
Thing #1: A Time magazine item about O’Brian and the Earpshow (‘55 to ‘61), and the line “rhymeswithburp.” (What the hell did that mean? Who knows but Time printed it.). Thing #2: The long-barreled Buntlinespecial that was mythically (i.e., inaccurately) associated with Earp, largely due to O’Brian’s show. Thing #3: A capsule profile or mini-biography of O’Brian that said he regarded his considerable Earp earnings as “fuck-youmoney” — I don’t know the origin of that term, but it might have begun with O’Brian.
Observed this morning on Brighton Way in the spirit-of-Dubai shopping district of Beverly Hills. “Flying off the shelves,” according to the woman minding the store.
Imagine being on your death bed at age 89, and telling yourself that you not only made a difference in your career but nudged things along in a human artistic and evolutionary sense when you played a female pinhead in a Hellraiser film.
In a 40-minute conversation with N.Y. Times columnist Kara Swisher, Matthew McConaughey has discussed his feelings about running for Texas governor. They basically boil down to “I don’t know, man…maybe if God gets into it and points to me and says ‘this guy…this guy can save us from the insanely polarized left-right extremes so vote him in and follow his ass’…otherwise I don’t know.”
If and when he becomes governor, McConaughey doesn’t want to just go through the motions. He wants to be a practical-minded poet philosopher slash earthy gov-bruh…a centrist reformationist blend of Sam Houston, George Washington and Martin Luther.
McConaughey #1: “One side I’m arguing is ‘exactly, that’s why you need to go get in there.’ The other side is ‘that’s a bag of rats, man. Don’t touch that with a 10-foot pole. You have another lane. You have another category to have influence and get done things you’d like to get done and help how you think you can help and even heal divides.'”
McConaughey #2: “Is that a place to make real change or is it a place where right now it’s a fixed game, you go in there, you just put on a bunch of band-aids, in four years you walk out and they rip them off and you’re gone? I’m not interested in that.”
In other words, MConaughey is more comfortable riffing on the idea of being Texas governor than actually trying to win the damn job. He doesn’t want to get his hands dirty by diving into the wrestling pit.
McConaughey is right in implying that lefty wokesters and righty Trumpsters are equally horrible, and he’s probably correct in saying that trying to rouse and activate the “sleeping giant” of centrism is the way to go now.
McConaughey #3: “People want a third party and we’ve got one and it doesn’t have a name right now and it is the majority. I’m hesitant to throw labels…but there is a sleeping giant right now. I think it’s necessary to be aggressively centric to possibly salvage democracy in America right now.”
McConaughey #4: “The left and right traffic is so far to the edge, their tires are not even on the pavement. They’re not riding the road of democracy, I don’t believe.”
There’s a two-word term that applies to McConaughey in the realm of Texas politics. That term is “honestly flakey.”
Give McConaughey credit for loving the word “partook”. And for saying “bag of rats.” That’s the best “bag of”expression I’ve heard since “bag of gas,” an Entertainment Weekly term that referred to Robert Redford‘s The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Many of us are deeply grateful to DaveChappelle for being a staunchrealist and a dedicated foe of wokester terror. In my heart of hearts and dream of dreams, Chappelle leads us out of this horrible nightmare. Not in a militant sense, but simply by being cool and sensible and unruffled.
The two finest films I saw at last month’s Telluride Film Festival were Joe Wright‘s exquisitely made Cyrano (UA Releasing, 12.31) and Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard (Warner Bros., 11.19). As things currently stand, these are also the most deserving Best Picture contenders…no question. Here, at long last, is the Cyrano trailer:
Posted on 9.2.21: “I’ve been watching filmed adaptations of Edmund Rostand‘s Cyrano de Bergerac for decades (Jose Ferrer‘s 1950 version, Steve Martin‘s Roxanne, the1990 Gerard Depardieu version, and Michael Lehmann‘s The Truth About Cats and Dogs). Wright’s newbie — an inventively choreographed musical, fortified by first-rate production design and wonderfully lighted cinematography — is arguably the most spiritually and poetically buoyant version of them all.
The acting is top-tier, the musical numbers are arresting, the dialogue is as good as this sort of thing gets, and it’s a truly authentic time-tunnel experience (save for the presentism in the casting, which is par for the course these days).
Peter Dinklage has absolutely hit the jackpot with his titular performance — he’ll definitely be Best Actor-nominated. The film will almost certainly end up being Best Picture-nominated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the year-end consensus is that Cyrano is a “better” musical than Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story and Jon Chu‘s In The Heights combined.
Based on Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical of the same name (in which Dinklage and Haley Bennett costarred before moving onto the film version), Cyrano is easily Wright’s best film since Anna Karenina. Seamus McGarvey‘s exquisite cinematography reminded me of David Watkins‘ lensing of Richard Lester‘s The Three Musketeers (’73) — it’s a real trip just to watch and sink into on a visual level alone.
Kudos to Cyrano costars Kelvin Harrison Jr., Bashir Salahuddin and Ben Mendelsohn.
An invitational screening of a film has just ended, and you, a journalist, were not a fan. (You wanted to be, but the film wouldn’t let you.) And now you’re on your way to the after-party.
The general etiquette is as follows: (1) The journo is obliged to be as fawning and gracious and complimentary as possible when speaking to talent or studio reps, although he/she is not obliged to lieoutright about his/her reaction to the film in question; and (2) It is permissible for journos to mutter their true opinion of the film with colleagues if they happen to be out of earshot of talent or studio reps.
And I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was never bored, and was seriously impressed with Cary Fukanaga‘s pacing, cutting, visual discipline and overall chops. There’s never any doubt that this is a grade-A package made by grade-A people. Plus it’s Craig’s best Bond since Casino Royale, and one of the best overall. And knowing about the ending didn’t fucking matter at all. There’s a difference between watching a film as an adult, and watching one as an infant.
The pleasure of any film is in the way it unfolds — that special-touch factor, the art of it, the timing, the polish, the undercurrent, the first-classiness of it all. How the story is told, not the story itself…right? Singer, not song.
On top of which Craig doesn’t play a boorish old-school sexist. He never has really. He plays a good, decent, smart, non-arrogant fellow in No Time to Die, and when the big moment comes it’s rather sad and classically invested in. And that’s where I shed my single, solitary tear.
Let no one doubt that the ending of No Time To Die was written by people who are terrified of seeming tethered to the past (who isn’t?), and are triply terrified of wokester (especially #MeToo) wrath, and that the ending was written to make a point — i.e., we’re in a new world, and there’ll be no more of that old “shaken, not stirred” broth…that smooth, sexist, tuxedo-wearing, martini-sipping swagger. We’re ending that shit here and now.
And it’s completely foolish and stupid, by the way, for the film to say at the end of the closing credits that JAMES BOND WILL RETURN. No Time To Die is not a Marvel or a D.C. film.
Friendo to HE: “I can’t say for sure what the Bond producers will do, but there’s way too much money on the table for them to just say goodbye to James Bond. And Barbara Broccoli is on record as saying that the character won’t be a woman. Bond will be back, with a new actor (probably a Caucasian), and they’ll present it as a reboot.”
HE to Friendo: “But they’ve conclusively eliminated that possibility. The only way to get around this would be inject Marvel and D.C.-styled plotting.”
The Stalinist prison guard living inside Dear White People showrunner and writer Jaclyn Moore has emerged. For she’s attempting to persuade Netflix to zotz Dave Chappelle‘s The Closer because his remarks about trans people, she feels, are prejudicial and uncool.
Last night Moore stated on Twitter and Instagram that she’ll no longer work with Netflix after watching The Closer. “After the Chappelle special, I can’t do this anymore,” Moore wrote. “I won’t work for Netflix again as long as they keep promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.”
If I was a Netflix honcho, I would reply to Moore as follows: “I hear you. You’re not altogether wrong. Chappelle’s views on trans women certainly don’t mirror our own, and we hope you and your community understand that. This aside, we deplore Stalinist censorship and don’t approve of efforts by anyone to muzzle anyone, least of all a brilliant comic whose entire career has been about considering the view of persons like yourself and occasionally saying ‘nope, not me, sorry.'”
HE to Moore: Anyone who partially describes Chappelle as a “goofy” comic doesn’t really hear him or get where he’s coming from, no offense. He’s not goofy or wacky, and he doesn’t live in a doo-wacky, doo-wacky, wah-wah world.
Chappelle: “In our country, you can shoot and kill a n***a, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings.”
Just a note to all the millions who lost their jobs over refusing to take the vaccine. I'm very sorry that you're all idiots, and I sincerely hope that you will experience not just disruption but difficulty because of your decision. And if you get the virus and are sent to God...well, I'm not going to cheer for that outcome. But if the worst does happen, you can at least look in a mirror before you die and say "yeah, I bought that."
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