Who suspected until last week’s big Cinemacon screening that TopGun: Maverick would turn out to be a heart movie? That it may (according to TheAnkler’s Jeff Sneider) leave Joe and Jane Popcorn on the verge of choking up? Who had an inkling?
Straight from Lady Gaga: “When I wrote this song for Top Gun: Maverick, I didn’t even realize the multiple layers it spanned across the film’s heart, my own psyche, and the nature of the world we’ve been living in.”
First HE reaction to song title: “Wouldn’t holding someone’s hand get in the way if you’re doing loop-dee-loops from inside the cockpit of an F-18?”
The dopiest-looking shirt design (will you look at those pointless, giant-sized droopy collars?) mine eyes have beheld since, literally, the late ‘70s, only these are worse.
We all knew it was inevitable, and now, according to an exclusive Politico report, the 1973Roev.Wade pro-abortion ruling has officially been trashed as the Supremes have voted against it. The decision was conveyed in a leaked letter draft by Justice Samuel Alito.
From “Elon Musk Tweeted My Cartoon,” a 5.2 opinion piece by Colin Wright. The subhead reads “Commentators on the left set about debunking my ‘lived experience’ with charts and abstractions.”
One glance and I said to myself “please, please make a feature out of this….better yet a 10-episode Hulu series. I’m serious — I would watch anything about teens taunting poor hapless winos with cruel sexual exhibitionism…I would watch it in a New York minute. Powerful metaphor. The brand is Fuxley.
Thenewtrailerfor Olivia Wilde’s Don’tWorryDarling (Warner Bros., 9.23) suggests a sexy, high-style period creep-out about middle-class conformity and submission to Big Corporate Brother.
Seemingly set in the ‘50s or early ‘60s. A mood similar to that of Martin Ritt‘s NoDownPayment (‘57), and clearly a metaphorical kin to Don Siegel’s Invasionof theBodySnatchers (‘56).
And right away they blow the mood by playing Brenton Wood’s “TheOogum BoogumSong,” which came out in ‘67 — an era in which fretting about cookie-cutter conformity had been left behind and people were into a whole ‘nother doobie-toke realm.
So right away you know that Wilde’s film is…uhm, playing by its own rules.
30 and 1/2 years after the appearance of this catchy little piece, an HE tribute to former Entertainment Weekly illustrator S.B. Whitehead — truly tops in his field.
Roughly 26 and 1/2 years ago I sent the attached to Los Angeles magazine publisher Joan McGraw.
Party chatter between myself and a certain fellow about then-editor Robert Sam Anson (who passed on 11.6.20) was shared with McGraw, and word got back that she didn’t care for my candor about a then-delicate subject.
The bad guy, of course, wasn’t me but the person who passed along loose talk to the boss. If you’re cool you never tattle-tale about what a colleague said while sipping Pinot Grigio.
I’m sharing this because it’s an honest, specific, well-written apology letter that doesn’t really apologize. It says “I’m technically sorry but…”
I like Bill Burr‘s general fuck-this attitude, but sometimes he can sound overly guy-ish. (Close to flirting with sexism.) But he voices an idea in this clip that has merit. It basically says “dueprocessbeforeTwitter.” Guys who’ve been accusedofthisorthat deserve anonymity until the accusations have been thoroughly vetted. If the accused turns out to be guilty, tar-and-feather him, Burr says. But what if the facts are not so clear cut? (Taken from last Monday’s “Bill’s Monday Morning Podcast.”)
Please note a similarity between the platform-heeled, ankle-strap sandals worn by Kirk Douglas in this Spartacus publicity still and a pair worn earlier today by Tatiana Antropova. Okay, her heels are higher but still.
Everyone presumably knows that Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville is an eight-part series about an infamous texting-suicide case that went to trial in 2017. The real-life Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning), an ice-cold sociopath, goaded her unstable teenage boyfriend, Conrad Roy (Colton Ryan), into committing suicide.
Based on Jesse Baron’s Esquire article of the same name, the series explores how and why the suicide happened and how Carter was eventually busted, prosecuted and convicted of manslaughter. She would up serving 11 months or something like that, but she’sthedevil and presumably knows it. This will be on her back for the rest of her life, and that’s a good thing.
Fanning plays Carter as such a revolting drama queen and contemptible attention whore that you can’t wait to see her get popped and cuffed, but it takes too long. I made it through two episodes before quitting. Okay, I may watch a couple more but this is a three-hour movie expanded into eight hours. It’s very well acted and all (special shout-out to Chloe Sevigny‘s performance as Conrad’s mom) but sometimes a miniseries just feels too stretched out.
I’m more interested in sitting through Erin Lee Carter‘s 143-minute I Love You, Now Die, which is on HBO Max.
