Great gushing cloudbursts are few and far between in my neck of the woods. I’m not talking about simple drenchings, which happen every so often — I’m talking cats and dogs, the wild Parasite rainstorm, monsoon-level, The Rains of Ranchipur and how this never happens in WeHo.
When you get right down to it I’ve experienced only five or six gully washers over the last 20 or 30 years, and almost all of them overseas. There was one serious soaking in Manhattan in the spring of ’81, when I was living on Bank Street. And a major cloudburst in Las Vegas back in the ’90s. But I wouldn’t describe either as super-exceptional.
The greatest urban rainstorm happened in Paris in the summer of ’03. Dylan I were living on a hilly street in southwest Montmartre — 23 rue Tourlaque. It was coming down so hard that the gutters were swamped with charging rapids. And the cacophony (trillions of water bullets clattering on hundreds of clay-tile rooftops) was magnificent. And the crackling thunder before it started. The wrath of an angry Old Testament God from a Cecil B. DeMille film.
The most exciting deluge in a forest primeval setting happened about 10 years later, in Vietnam. In a jungle-like area not far from the Mausoleum of Emperor Minh Mang, just south of Hue. We took shelter inside a kind of makeshift cafe — open air, plastic tables and chairs, a slanted wood-frame roof covered with palm fronds and banana leaves. The sheer energy of the downpour plus the overwhelming symphony of sound (half raging waterfall, half Noah’s Ark flood waters)…must have lasted a good 15 or 20 minutes.
I’m one of the unfortunate few who hasn’t received that $600 pandemic assistance payment, which was approved by Congress two-plus weeks ago. And yes, I’ve checked all my accounts. Now I’m worried about missing out on Biden’s $1400 follow-up pandemic assistance check. I’m told the $600 snafu is partly my fault because I didn’t pay my 2019 taxes via direct deposit, but via snail mail. At least I can deduct $600 on my 2020 taxes.
The obviously eccentric Jake Angeli, “the guy with the buffalo horns”, is asking Trump to pardon him. The would-be actor’s defense is that he just painted his face, put on his outfit, strolled into the Capitol building and posed for some photos. He didn’t break any windows, didn’t relieve himself in the hallways or on the floor of the Senate, didn’t hit any cops, etc.
I don’t know what kind of time Angeli is facing, but if I was the presiding judge I’d sentence him to a bare minimum of two years. I might cut the sentence down to 18 months if he agrees to serve on an old-fashioned, Cool Hand Luke-styled Southern chain gang.
The “QAnon Shaman” has become the best-known symbol of the 1.6 Capitol insurrection. He belongs to history now — 50 or 100 years now people will still be looking at his get-up and shaking their heads and muttering “wow, what an asshole.” Naturally he’s going to try and monetize his newfound celebrity.
That madman shot of Armie Hammer is like that 1969 Life magazine photo of Charles Manson. It’s going to appear again and again, and is obviously going to make things worse for the poor guy. Right now he’s being sliced and diced by social media carnivores. In a text he called himself a sexual “cannibal” — obviously an allusion to carniverous cunnilingus. He’s apparently a “dominant”, and yes, his [allegedly] stated appetites sound like the voltage was turned up too high. So yeah, he’s on the pervy side. But haven’t his affairs and assignations been consensual? What did he do to deserve to be ripped apart like an impala being disembowled by wild dogs? Who’s behind this? What’s the motive?
Variety award-season columnist Clayton Davis was apparently floating on a cloud while writing his review of Regina King‘s One Night In Miami, calling it “the first solid Oscar contender to drop in the fall festival circuit.”
All right, let’s calm down. Yes, this is a respectable, well-acted film in a disciplined and concentrated sort of way. But as interesting as it is and as admired as King may be for doing a better-than-decent job, One Night in Miami is basically a stage play and that shit only goes so far.
I don’t know how to explain it in so many words, but I somehow expected that a film about a February 1964 meeting between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in a Miami hotel room would amount to something more than what this movie conveys.
Playwright Kemp Powers has adapted his 2013 play about African American identity in the ’60s.The result is not great or brilliant, but it’s good enough in terms of observational fibre and social relevance, or at least the second half is. But the fact that it was directed by King doesn’t make it any more or less than what it actually is.
And for a film that largely (65% or 70%) takes place in a single hotel room, it visually underwhelms. Tami Reiker‘s cinematography doesn’t match the high water marks of Boris Kaufman‘s one-room lensing of 12 Angry Men or Glen MacWilliams‘ cinematography for Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.
Denzel Washington’s titular performance in Spike Lee‘s Malcolm X was a tougher and more resolute dude than Kingsley Ben-Adir‘s version. Malcolm won’t stop beating up on poor Sam Cooke, and he seems weak when he asks Cassius (“Cass”) to join him in breaking with Elijah Muhammad. And he weeps! Just not the solemn, heroic figure that I’ve been reading about all these years. And wasn’t he wearing that carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard in ‘64?
Goodmoment: When Cooke criticizes Malcolm for reacting in a cold, racially dismissive way when JFK was murdered (“The chickens coming home to roost”). Cooke says his mother cried over the news, and Clay says his momma cried too.
Leslie Odom, Jr. is quite good as Cooke, but I didn’t believe an early scene at the Copacabana in which the snooty white clientele reacts to Cooke’s singing with derision and rudeness. In ’64 Cook was known all over as a major-league crooner who had released a cavalcade of hits going back to ‘57. No way would an audience of uptown swells treat him like that. Even if they didn’t like his act, the middle-class politeness instinct is too embedded.
I felt the same contemptuous attitude toward whiteys in the Copa scene that Ava DuVernay showed when she invented that Selma scenario in which LBJ told J. Edgar Hoover to tape-record MLK’s sexual motel encounters in order to pressure him into not pushing for the Voting Rights Act. You’ll recall how Joseph Califano called b.s. on that.
The postscript reminds that Malcolm X was murdered by gunfire a year later, but it ignores Cooke’s death in Los Angeles less than a year later. That tells you that King is a bit of a spinner — she didn’t want to leave the audience with a downish, mystifying epilogue. But it happened.
This is currently the most emotionally soothing photo in my system. I’d like to be able to visit this region of Vietnam every April or thereabouts. If I was ordered to live somewhere in Asia I’d park it in Hanoi but come here for occasional week-long stays. Two other far-from-the-madding-crowd downshift comfort spots: (a) Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland; (b) Knocklong, Ireland (near Limerick).
Flimsy and debt-besieged even before the 2016 election, the Trump empire is in even worse shape now.
After the 1.6 Capitol insurrection and yesterday’s Impeachment 2.0, all the big corporate interests consider Trump a pariah and are cutting ties. In terms of his present financial interests (hotels, golf courses) he’s starting to look like a serious loser. Or, if you will, a dead man. No Twitter, no nothin’.
Not to mention the IRS hounds and the coming prosecutions from New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance. If Trump were to liquidate everything he owns, could he even pay off the alleged $400 million he owes? Maybe but then what?
Yes, he could theoretically build a media company upon his 75 million looney-tune rightwing followers, but one way or the other he’s going to spend the rest of his life in court, and gradually — here’s the real killer — the news media is going to lose interest in him.
How much longer will he live with his fast-food diet and all? Ten years? Less?
Incidentally: I like Secular Talk‘s Kyle Kulinski, who’s pretty sharp, can think clearly on his feet and as of last summer had 848,000 YouTube subscribers and roughly a half-billion YouTube views.
But where’s the curtain liner? And what about my ReverentRunt bath mat, for extra traction while showering? Barry Lyndon soap-on-a-rope comes in four different fragrances — sandalwood, Irish tree moss, green aloe and Turnberry spice. And for women, a delicate Lady Lyndon semi-transparent bath shawl for wearing in the bath or under the shower as women of social distinction never bathe naked.
“It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, filthy or showered, they are all equal now.” — Posted earlier today on Facebook by director-producer-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski.
For the first 45 or 50 minutes of Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, it’s all tension and anxiety, tension and anxiety. Plus a little tension and anxiety.
It’s basically about Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James, a bomb-defusing expert but more fundamentally a danger freak and an adrenalin junkie. He doesn’t like flirting with the possibility of being blown to bits — he loves it, or at least the feeling of momentary triumph when he overcomes that threat.
The other two members of the bomb-defusal team — Anthony Mackie‘s Sgt. Sanborn and Brian Gerahty‘s Specialist Eldridge — don’t love flirting with death and pretty much hate James’ recklessness, and there’s the basis of the dramatic conflict.
And then David Morse‘s Colonel Reed arrives on the scene and offers a little comic relief. He’s not appalled by James’ hot-dog behavior — he’s half-amused, perversely tickled, tee-hee. “Well, that’s just hot shit,” he says to James, grinning and beaming like a fan. “You’re a wild man…you know that?”
My favorite moment comes when he asks James how many bombs he’s defused, and James tries to deflect. Reed is having none of it: “Sergeant, I asked you a question.” What follows is pure hilarity, pure relief. Every tension-wracked film needs a guy like Reed to pop in sooner or later.
Said this ten years ago, saying it again: The Hurt Locker needed to end with Renner staring at the rows of cereal boxes in the supermarket. We didn’t need to see him go back to Iraq. The cereal boxes said it all.
Wayne Wang‘s Slam Dance (’87), a sultry mystery noir, was a critical bust and a financial wipeout — it cost a modest $4.5 million to shoot, but only managed a lousy $406,881 gross. The alleged bad guy was producer, screenwriter and costar Don Keith Opper, who reportedly interfered with Wang to such a degree that, according to the Wiki page, Wang tried to get his name taken off the film.
And yet Slam Dance got two things right — (a) the pistol-hot one-sheet featuring costar Virginia Madsen in a skin-tight black gown, and (b) using a music video of Tim Scott McConnell‘s “High Hopes”, a much better song than Slam Dance was a film, for promotional purposes. McConnell wrote the tune in ’85. Bruce Springsteenreleased a version as part of a same-titled album in 2014.
Which other films were promoted with a music video that was arguably better or at least more engaging than the movie itself?
