Bob Woodward to MSNBC: “As we’ve discussed before there is a Battle Royale going on inside the Justice Department about whether to charge Trump, and I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that. A clear and present danger to American democracy and Garland is STILL hemming and hawing about prosecuting this motherfucker? Woodward: “The evidence [against Trump] is absolutely overwhelming.”
Ari Melber: “Some experts are saying that there is evidence that Merrick Garland is just slow-walking this thing.”
HE is sorry about the sudden death of Ivana Trump. The 73-year-old mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump was found unconscious and unresponsive yesterday in her home. Due respect and condolences.
Jordan Peele‘s Nope opens seven days hence (7.22), and there’s no buzz at all. Donut. The first critics screenings begin next week. This doesn’t necessarily “mean” anything as distribs often screen horror films at the last minute.
Peele has made three features (Get Out, Us, Nope), has had two massive hits and become a brand, and many (including the absolutely relentless Bob Strauss) still swear by Get Out.
“It’s not Rosemary’s Baby but what is?,” a friend says. “But it’s infinitely better than The Stepford Wives.”
Peele, I replied, is a commercial filmmaker working in the thriller-horror-spooker field. He is what he is, but he’s not a 21st Century Rod Serling or Roald Dahl or Ira Levin.
Friendo: “The jury’s out, I think, on where he’s going.”
HE: “Strictly a genre tickler.
Friendo: “I think he’s very gifted. If he’s smart, he’ll make Nope his last horror film for a while.”
HE: “Due respect but I don’t think he knows how to do anything more than try to be the black Rod Serling. Except he never wrote anything like Patterns or Requiem for a Heavyweight.”
Friendo: “You think Get Out is decent but overrated, overly praised because of the woke factor, etc. I think it’s singular and gripping. Us didn’t quite work, but I think Get Out makes its mark.”
HE: “You know that story about Jordan having shot Get Out as a horror film AND as a comedy, and that he wasn’t sure which way to go but he finally figured it out in editing…right? This helps explain why Lil Rel Howery is clearly a character with comic attitude — the guy delivering comic relief.
Friendo: “That’s interesting. That would make it a rival to Ralph Rosenblum’s great story of how Annie Hall found its narrative form, its vibe, and its very identity as a romantic comedy through his editing of it. Of course, the thing about horror and comedy is that they’ve always gone together. The three greatest horror movies of the last 65 years — Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — are all, on some level, horror comedies.”
HE: “That’s a very sophisticated (as in highly perverse) viewpoint, calling Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby comedies. I’ll allow that if you stretch the idea of ‘comedy’ to its breaking point, you could say that these two films are flavored with exceedingly dry comedy here and there. They’re basically low-key, naturalistic horror films flecked with dry humor here and there, but they hardly qualify as comedies.
This is not an equivalent of Roberts (now in her mid 50s) receiving an AFI Life Achievement award, but it’s in the same ballpark. One of these years she’ll be so honored by the AFI; she might also one day receive a special career Oscar. So let’s ask what her career has really amounted to in terms of serious cred, and which performances are the real keepers.
For me the Roberts performances that really count are not her romcom and grounded-romantic-formula roles, because she’s been doing them since the late ’80s and can perform them in her sleep — Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, Everyone Says I Love You, the forthcoming Ticket to Paradise. I’m not saying her romcom performances aren’t enjoyable or effective — I’m saying they don’t seem to represent any great effort on her part. Maybe it’s unfair to say that. I recognize that “comedy is hard.”
I respect her decent-enough thrillers — Sleeping With The Enemy, The Pelican Brief, Duplicity — but we all understand that Roberts’ manner of acting never seems to fit into the thriller mode.
I do, however, worship her real-pain performances in Steven Soderbergh‘s Erin Brockovich, John Wells‘ August: Osage County, Mike Nichols‘ Closer and her recent Martha Mitchell performance in Gaslit. To me these four are bullet-proof.
And I adore the scene in Ocean’s Twelve when she plays a Julia Roberts lookalike (Tess Ocean, the ex-wife of George Clooney‘s Danny Ocean) and then talks to her actual self on the phone…the one scene in her entire career that made me fall on the floor.
I need to upgrade my summer wardrobe…yeah, Club Monaco has the right idea…shorts, sneakers, baseball cap and a generic dork shirt. Why didn’t I think of this combo myself?
Remember when the mannequins standing behind Fifth Avenue fashion store windows wore stuff that seemed fairly special and stand-out-ish? Clothing that exuded a certain uptown Manhattan attitude that discerning passersby found, y’know, attractive?You really can’t go wrong with baggy, floppy whites (fishing hat, oversized dress shirt, shorts) mixed with black street shoes and black socks. I’m totally in awe of the Prada Martians who thought this up.
Just a couple of gals with a laid-back, take-what-comes existential attitude, rough and ready with a full tank but in no particular hurry…life is a journey, anadventure, and cruising along in leather-upholstered seats with a rumbling, well-tuned engine under the hood makes all the difference.
Ernest Borgnine passed almost exactly ten years ago. He did a lot of interviews and told a lot of stories later in life, and one that I never forgot involved a verbal confrontation with a group of Italian guys in some quiet New York City neighborhood. (Or possibly in Boston or Rhode Island or Newark, New Jersey…some northeastern city with a significant Italian population.)
It happened a few weeks after the August ’53 opening of From Here to Eternity, in which Borgnine achieved a big career breakthrough for his performance as “Fatso” Judson, a sadistic Army stockade sergeant whose racist brutality leads to the death of Frank Sinatra‘s Pvt. Maggio.
Borgnine had just walked out of a bar or was hailing a cab, and four or five guys walked up and one of them said “you’re him, right?” Borgnine copped to being the guy who played Fatso, and the guy said, “So what’d you kill Frank Sinatra for?”
Borgnine tried a standard rational response — “I didn’t kill him, I played a guy who killed him, I’m an actor and so is Sinatra,” etc. But the under-educated Italian guys weren’t having it — “yeah but why’d you kill him?” They’d apparently decided that Borgnine/Judson, who’d called Sinatra a “wop” two or three times in Eternity, was a symbol for all the racist bullies they’d known all their lives, all the guys who’d picked on Italians or denigrated them with slurs.
Borgnine gradually realized that there was no avoiding fisticuffs, so he offered to take them on one at a time if that’s how it had to be. One of the Italian guys said something to another in Italian, and Borgnine, born in Hamden, Connecticut to Italian-immigrant parents, answered back in the same tongue. The air of hostility immediately ceased.
For several years I’ve tried to find a video clip of Borgnine telling this story, and I’ve never had any luck.
This is a weird detour but when I think of passengers falling out of airplanes, I think of three scenes: (a) Eddie Albert‘s Cadet Hughes falling out of a B-17 at 10,000 feet in Bombardier (’43), (b) Gert Frobe‘s portly Auric Goldfinger getting sucked out of a small window in a private airborne jet in Goldfinger (’64) and (c) Ed Nelson‘s Major Alexander, a 747 co-pilot, getting sucked through a smashed cockpit window in Airport 75.
Frobe’s Goldfinger scene was played for laughs, and if you ask me so was Nelson’s in Airport 1975. But Albert’s death scene was shocking and chilling.
34 years ago this same ghastly fate happened to Aloha Airlines senior stewardess Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing. Through maintenance dereliction a tear in the fuselage was ignored and the roof above the first-class section of an Oahu-bound flight #243 was ripped off by wind velocity, and Lansing was sucked out. Her body was never recovered.
Yesterday morning I happened to watch a cartoonish video about Aloha Flight #243, produced by the “Be Amazed” YouTube channel — a brand apparently aimed at children. The animated images of the crew and passengers aren’t just primitive but wildly insensitive. Consider the below illustration of Lansing’s misfortune.
I’m not a scolder as a rule, but imagine if Lansing had a close family relative or a friend and they came upon this video.
Yesterday afternoon Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister and Sasha Urbanreported that TMZ’s 7.9.22 report about Armie Hammer is true — he is indeed working at a certain hotel resort in the Cayman Islands (i.e., Morritts Resort), and reportedly focusing on selling timeshares.
Excerpt: “A source tells Variety that Hammer is indeed working selling timeshares at a hotel in the Caymans, and that all other reports suggesting otherwise are inaccurate. ‘He is working at the resort and selling timeshares. He is working at a cubicle,” [the source] explains. “The reality is he’s totally broke, and is trying to fill the days and earn money to support his family.”
Armie’s salesman hair is too short. He looks better with longer, wavier hair and the bushy beard.
Update: Vanity Fair‘s Julie Miller has reported that at the height of Hammer’s career meltdown, which apparently had something to do with a substance issue, Robert Downey, Jr. stepped in a like a big brother and paid for Hammer’s nearly six-month rehab stay.
A friend was a tad skeptical about the trailer for Maria Schrader‘s She Said (Universal, 11.18), which popped this morning. Actually two friends were, but this film is going to sail through.
“No, no…this is good,” I replied. “I can feel it. It has discipline, tension…first-rate acting from Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan and, as Weinstein employee Zelda Perkins, Samantha Morton. A well-honed screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Nicholas Britell‘s music is a little overbearing** but this is Spotlight again.”
This is a Best Picture contender — no question, no doubt. If Spotlight can get there, this can too.
The victims weren’t children being molested by priests and some who were invited to Harvey’s first-class hotel rooms had to be at least wary of what might happen, but this is one of those social justice, social portraiture flicks that can’t miss, at least as far as a Best Picture nomination is concerned.
“Apparently Harvey isn’t played by anyone. Well, he is, but not as a speaking character with a puss. There’s a clip of a big fat guy we see from the rear, but we don’t see his face. We hear Harvey’s voice on a speakerphone during a conference call, but his voice isn’t deep or punchy enough.”
A guy who’s allegedly caught a research screening:
“Better than a TV movie. Not sure about Best Picture, but Samantha Morton and Carey Mulligan are the MVPs. Very intelligently made and well-directed. They smartly show the effect of the abuse. Victims go back to the hotel rooms, reenact what happened in the bed and shower, but with their clothes on. It’s very Spotlight, maybe too much so. It also has a fantastic ending. We never get to see Weinstein’s face, only see his back and hear his voice.”
Pic is produced by Plan B’s Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner.
Lenkiewicz’s screenplay is based on Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s “She Said.”
Sincere apologies to Larry Karaszewski, but I don’t have many fond memories of Robert Altman‘s Short Cuts (’93). I saw it 29 years ago, once, and all I remember is the faintly dreary vibes and the cast behaving in the usual eccentric, Altman-esque ways and the visual drabness and the Julianne Moore-Matthew Modine argument scene with the pubic hair and that soul-baring scene with Jack Lemmon “acting” in his usual actor-ish fashion.
I “respect” Short Cuts, of course, but there’s a reason why I haven’t re-watched it in all this time. The reason is the miserable downishness of Raymond Carver‘s short stories. If I was suddenly stuck in a Carver story or wearing the shoes of a Carver character, I would become a heroin addict.
Respectful disagreement with the late Michael Wilmington: “Short Cuts is a Los Angeles jazz rhapsody that represents Robert Altman at an all-time personal peak—and it came at just the right time in his career. For anyone who believed that what American movies needed most, after the often-moribund cinematic eighties, was more of the old Altman independent spirit and maverick brilliance — and more of a sense of what the country really is, rather than what it should be — the director’s sudden cinematic reemergence with 1992’s The Player and 1993’s Short Cuts was an occasion for bravos.”
