Daniel Petrie's "Lifeguard" ('76) Finally Doesn't Satisfy
December 9, 2025
Before Last Night's 45th Anniversary...
December 9, 2025
Now That Netflix Is Finally Streaming “Jay Kelly”
December 8, 2025
First and foremost, Ben Shapiro needs to fire his sound mixer — the first four or five minutes of this Matt Taibbi interview show is smothered in loud music. But that aside, there’s an interesting discussion of the wokester left’s “our way or the highway” attitude around the 36:30 mark.
Ben Shapiro: “[There’s a whole side of the aisle that] claims there is a false subjectivity…that there should not be another idea and whatever we say goes, and if you controvert that narrative then you are immediately barred from the club.”
Matt Taibbi: “Yeah, and that’s just a losing argument with most audiences. People implicitly distrust anyone who doesn’t want you to listen to someone else’s argument. That used to be something that attracted me to liberalism…this idea that ‘I don’t care what this person says, I believe what I believe, you can listen to them if you want but [either way] it doesn’t bother me….right? Well, that’s not the attitude any more. The [current] attitude is, we have to do everything we can to stamp out [conservative] disinformation. [This way of thinking and behaving] has a tendency to inspire audiences to swing in the opposite direction.
“This censoriousness, this idea of stamping out the other side completely…in the hope that you’ll be the last opinion standing…that’s a losing strategy, i think, and it’s incredible that it’s been adopted.”
Some may find it odd that handicappers are calling Lightyear (Disney, 6.17) dead meat despite earnings of $152 million worldwide and $88.7 million domestic. But you have to look at the details, and detail #1 is that Lightyeardropped 65% last weekend, earning a lousy $17.5 million after pulling down $50.5 million on opening weekend.
The Ankler‘s Sean McNulty is calling this the “worst-ever drop for a PIXAR film (not counting Covid-impacted Onward)….with Minions arriving on Friday, [Lightyear] was just a misfire. And cue the ‘PIXAR isn’t the same without Lasseter’ pieces in 3, 2… Just remember to include the reasons why Lasseter was ousted.”
Two days ago N.Y. Post columnist Kyle Smithspeculated that Lightyear was hurt by general audiences being fed up with films that secrete woke instruction. Not the brief lesbian kiss but a suggestion that Lightyear might have a hidden lecture or two up its sleeve.
“Hollywood was founded by, and for generations run by, pure showmen who were fanatically devoted to giving the audience what it wanted,” Smith wrote. “Today Hollywood’s message is, ‘Let us entertain you! But first, a brief lecture on what’s wrong with you, the audience…’
“One reason Top Gun: Maverick is such a huge success — the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s career and probably the biggest movie of this year — is that it simply ignores all quarrelsome real-world issues. Maverick seeks merely to entertain, not to persuade you that the people who made it are virtuous.”
Based on pure nutso speculation, Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie is going to be either Logan’s Run or Village of the Damned. Or a blend of the two. That’s what I’m sniffing in the air. I’m just putting this out there. I know nothing.
If I’m even a little bit intrigued by a film after a first viewing, there’s a slight chance I’ll watch it again. If I’m a bit more than mildly intrigued, I’ll almost certainly watch it twice. And if I’m flat-out intrigued or turned on even, there’s a decent chance I’ll see it three times or more.
I was okay with Elvis (certainly the final third in Las Vegas portion), but honestly? Right now I don’t have the slightest interest in seeing it again. It was too annoying and exhausting. Okay, I might catch it again when it goes to streaming…
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has already seen it twice, and he’s written a fascinating side-eyed take (“Why Isn’t Elvis A Home Run?“). You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. But I did.
Posted on 9.23.15: In my book any 1950s film captured in VistaVision and rendered in Bluray and/or high-def streaming is worth seeing, even if the movie itself is mediocre.
And: One mark of a serious cinephile is the ability to ignore script or acting flaws and just zero in on the cinematography, which in this instance is fairly ripe and detailed and eye-poppy.
It is therefore permissible to have an interest in a Bluray or at least a 1080p or 4K streamer of Hal Kanter‘s Loving You (’57), which was shot in VistaVision by the great Charles Lang — an Oscar nominee for his lensing of Sabrina, Separate Tables, Some Like It Hot and One-Eyed Jacks.
There is, of course, no such thing as a really good Elvis Presley film, but the first three — Love Me Tender, Loving You and King Creole — are at least tolerable. The semi-autobiographical Loving You, the only color film in this trio, is the only one in which Presley performs a few straight-up ’50s rock tunes.
Paramount may have leased the rights to Warner Home Video or not, but for some reason there’s no Bluray or high-def streaming version of Loving You for sale or on the horizon– only an out-of-print Lionsgate DVD from 2003, which collectors are selling for $70 bucks and higher. Forget it.
Variety‘s Chris Willman to Colonel Tom Parker biographer Alanna Nash: “What’s your overall feeling on the movie’s truth-ometer? Are the liberties worth it for creating an artistic picture? Does it veer off in ways that seem unnecessary?”
Nash: “The timeline…well, what timeline? It’s all a Baz Luhrmann fever dream. The past, present and future are all shook up like a ’50s milkshake and served with a thousand straws!
“Other than the tremendous pains Baz has taken to make this story seem ‘woke’, the liberties are essentially fair — except to Parker. In making him such an antagonist, they have robbed him of his many accomplishments with his client.
“Luhrmann has really framed this through a present-day lens. Elvis had just as many white influences and announced as early as seventh grade that he was going to sing at the Grand Ole Opry. Remember, he entered a talent contest as a child singing ‘Old Shep’ — warbling about dead dogs is about as country as it gets. An early hero in Tupelo was a hillbilly singer named Mississippi Slim.
“But living in a ‘colored’ neighborhood, as [Elvis] did, he certainly heard early r & b, jump-blues and swing tunes pulsating through the walls at the nearby juke joints, and he loved it, as he did both Black and white gospel. Still, the odds were heavily in favor that he’d be a country singer and his stint on the Louisiana Hayride seemed to point him in that direction.”
My first reaction to those hysterical screaming girls in Elvis…to those hormonal howls and wails in the Louisiana Hayride concert sequence, was “Baz is overcranking it again…he always does this…can’t help himself.”
But today I took a look at some ’50s footage of women watching Presley perform, and Luhrmann didn’t exaggerate all that much. The reality is that ’50s women responded on a level of 7.5 or 8 or perhaps even 9, and Luhrmann’s women took it to level 10 or 11. But they’re not that far apart.
And the sullen reactions of the guys in the audience in Elvis are spot-on…they hate him for turning the women on, but they also feel envious. The exact same thing happened in the mid ’50s.
The following are from Loving You (’57), Presley’s second film and his first in color:
As far as it goes, HE approves of Austin Butler‘s performance as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann‘s hyper homina-homina biopic.
On 5.26.22 I wrote that Butler “does a good workmanlike job in the title role. He apparently gave everything he had. As Owen Gleiberman has written, Butler looks less like Elvis than the young John Travolta mixed with Jason Priestley. But he worked it hard. Respect.”
Yesterday HE commenter Eddie Ginley, an incessant troublemaker, asked readers to remember “when Wells sounded the drum beats against Butler’s casting?…now the praise for his performance is the one unifying factor in all reviews….What happened? How did Wells get this so terribly wrong?”
HE response: “I got nothing wrong. Don’t lie, don’t fabricate. I had been profoundly unimpresssed with Butler’s Tex Watson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and reacted accordingly to his Elvis casting, partly because he doesn’t genetically resemble the Real McCoy. DON’T LIE.”
Ginley responded by quoting from an HE piece about the Elvis casting process: “Four contenders had recently screen-tested for the Presley role in Luhrmann‘s biopic about the relationship between the iconic rock star and Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), and it was my view that three of them — Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller and Harry Styles — weren’t right. My judgment was that 28 year-old Austin Butler (The Dead Don’t Die, the grubby and psychotic Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood) seemed “the most interesting possibility among the four.'”
HE response: “What did I basically say? That Butler seemed less problematic than Elgort, Teller (too old) or Styles. That doesn’t mean Butler (John Travolta meets Jason Priestley) was a perfect choice, and I had made it quite clear that his Tex Watson was, to me, a creepy poseur. I hated the way he said ‘I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s bidness!’ [not a typo]
“Whenever a thoughtful person calls this or that creative choice ‘interesting,’ that almost ALWAYS means they have a slight issue with it. ‘Interesting’ is a close relation of ‘impressive.’ It’s a dodge word that smart people use when they don’t want to share their actual opinion.”
Jon Stewart gonna Jon Stewart and and more power, but something snapped when I watched “The Problem With White People,” and things haven’t been the same since. A little more than a month ago Stewart was tributed at the Kennedy Center with the 23rd annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and I really couldn’t get into it, man…sorry.
When I think of Stewart now, I think he could maybe sorta kinda go fuck himself…no offense.
A little more than three months ago my admiration for and approval of Stewart stopped dead in its tracks. To repeat, Stewart’s “The Problem with White People“, which aired on his Apple talk show on 3.25.22, is what did it.
On 3.30 I shared my skepticism and revulsion at what this one-sided woke indoctrination seminar was pushing, and particularly the dismissal of Andrew Sullivan‘s opinions by Stewart and another of his guests, the odious Lisa Bond of Race2Dinner…it was so enraging. I wanted to throw something at my computer screen, although I dismissed that instinct a millisecond later because it was only 15 inches in front of my face and what was I going to throw anyway? A sliced tomato? The juice would get into the guts of my Macbook Pro and then I’d really be in trouble.
Stewart and Bond were basically parroting woke talking points, to wit: (a) all disparity equals discrimination, (b) meritocracy is merely a systematic smokescreen for white dominance, (c) the low marriage rate among African Americans is the fault of whites, (d) almost all American sub-systems or social standards are guises for white power, (e) the whole societal system in which we work and live is gamed in favor of whites, and therefore (f) white people have a duty to cleanse and overhaul these systems in order to alleviate the stain and the shame of institutional racism.
I’ve responded to these talking points with three significant HE posts about The 1619 Project, which is pretty much the historical cradle for wokester theology in the realm of American racism. The best of them was “What’s Your 1619 Beef?“, posted on 7.30.20. Here’s an excerpt:
“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 and profited by over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes me as a bridge too far.
“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening & shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it — immigration, the industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations and excesses of the wealthy elites, the delusion of religion, anti-Native American racism and genocide, breadbasket farming, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, the vast networks of railroads, selfishness & self-interest, factories, construction, the two world wars of the 20th Century, scientific innovation, native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) and rock, American literature, theatre and Hollywood movies, sweat shops, 20th Century urban architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, major-league baseball, Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic, fashion, gardening, native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, hot dogs, the shipping industry, hard work and innovation, the garment industry, 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, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, barber shops & manual lawnmowers, the auto industry, prohibition & gangsters, the Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that, status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), popular music (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles), TV, great American universities, great historians, great journalism (including the National Lampoon and Spy magazine), beat poetry, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes and Studio 54, 20th & 21st Century tech innovations, gay culture, comic books, stage musicals, Steve Jobs, etc.
The enthusiastically received Elvis is in its third day of national release (if you count the Thursday previews), and it’s time for some reactions from HE regulars.
Kindly, bending-over-backwards, vaguely worded assessments (“It’s not perfect but I love Presley’s pop-chart hits, and there’s no understanding the movie without letting those songs into your soul-stream”) are not welcome. Please lay it out straight.
I’ve barely written about Elvis myself, except for that 5.26 post-screening riff that I tapped out in Cannes after catching Baz Luhrmann‘s film in the Salles Agnes Varda.
We all knew it was coming, and yet somehow it feels a lot worse now that it’s official.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade is a scourge — a cruel, hideous imposition upon all women, right now and for the foreseeable future. Don’t even talk about what will happen in bumblefuck territories over the coming weeks, months and possibly years — removing the right of women (poor women especially) to choose their own biological fates and futures is draconian, deplorable and fairly close to medieval.
I’ve been thinking about this decision for most of the day, and particularly during my journey back from Berkshires. The likely real-world impact is sinking into my head in stages, and the air seems to get a bit colder each time.
As emotionally conflicted as I am about mid-to-late-term abortion (I went through a Jack Nicholson-like change of heart** when the news of Sutton’s arrival was shared), the right of a woman to choose one way or the other is absolute.
I’m certainly consumed with loathing for the six Supreme Court justices who struck down this fair, necessary and former law of the land, and especially the three Trumpies — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom blatantly misrepresented their views on Roe during their confirmation hearings and concurrent discussions with legislators.
Putting it mildly, Lawrence O’Donnell’s reaction [above] to the trashing of Roe v. Wade closely reflects my own, and almost certainly the reactions of at least two-thirds if not three-quarters of the country.
Key quote: “The current Supreme Court is not a product of democracy. It is a product of minority rule…a product of the corruption of constitutional processes by Senate Republicans, who refused to even allow for a vote on President Obama‘s final choice for a Supreme Court justice” — i.e., Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has so far shown himself to be a wimp in the matter of a possible federal prosecution of Donald Trump.
“The Republican justices on the Supreme Court share a dangerous Trumpian characteristic — they are incapable of embarassment.”
Despite a chorus of “uh-oh’s” from industry wise guys, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is not — repeat, not — a box-office shortfaller. It’s not Top Gun: Maverick but for a longish ADD biopic aimed at oldsters, it’s doing fairly well with a projected weekend tally of $31 million and change.
The second weekend, of course, will tell the real tale. But until then.,.
