I’ve been waiting a long while to see Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde(Netflix), an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ semi-fictional take on the life of Marilyn Monroe, played in the film by Ana de Armas.
Like Oates’ book, Dominik’s screenplay is semi-truthfulintermsofacknowledging significantplayersinMonroe’slife. Adrien Brody plays a seemingly ArthurMiller-like playwright, Bobby Cannavale plays what sounds like a Joe DiMaggio figure, and Casper Phillipson (who played JFK in PabloLarrain’s Jackie) is “the President” in Dominik’s film. Plus Tony Curtis and James Dean (played by Michael Masini and Luke Whoriskey) are supporting characters.
As it is (a) seriously intended, (b) began shooting in ‘19, and (c) has had plenty of time to fiddle around in post, I naturally presumed Blonde would turn up at one or both of the premiere ‘21 film festivals, Venice and Telluride. Alas, I’m told this isn’t in the cards. I’m sorry to hear this. Blonde will presumably pop on Netflix sometime in the fall.
I still don’t get Anna Fitzpatrick‘s insincere (jokey) disdain for Woody Allen’s decade–oldliterary fantasy. Owen Wilson’s character imagines magical encounters with 1920s “lost generation” luminaries because he idolizes them along with the era they helped define. There’s nothing wrong with or incomplete about the set-up — Fitzpatrick is just pissing on Allen because his pariah status among progressive Millennial women allows her to dismiss his creations willy-nilly.
…to creator of this poster art (found on Twitter) for failing to copy or write down his name. Cameron Crowe’s family + struggling zoo + heart discovery drama is almost a decade old, but in today’s realm Black Widow would never play a secondary role…star or strong costar or nothing.
The Dan Bailey-Tucker Carlson confrontation happened two evenings ago (Friday, 7.23) at Dan Bailey’s Outdoor Company in Livingston, Montana. The store’s website has gone to some effort to alert people that the tall, unshaven, hat-wearing guy who confronted Carlson has no affiliation with the store, even though his name, coincidentally, is Dan Bailey.
Leos Carax‘s Annette, which premiered almost three weeks ago (7.6) at the Cannes Film Festival, will be given a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on 8.6.21, followed by a digital streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video on 8.20.21.
I watched Annette last night. It’s an arthouse doozy that leaves you stunned and astonished, lemme tell ya. There’s plenty of time to write a proper review, but I tapped out a short riff this morning and shared it with two or three friends.
“Only the most perverse, anti-populist critics will even flirt with being kind to, much less praising, Annette when it opens stateside,” I wrote. “Once you get past the strikingly surreal visual style and the fact that it was, like, made at all, there is only the self-loathing rage of Adam Driver’s Henry McHenry character, a stand-up comedian, and Carax’s seething disdain for easily led-along audiences.
“Annette is ‘brave’ and wildly out there, but this is arguably the most morally repellent musical ever made in motion picture history. Driver’s Henry, an envelope-pushing comedian who performs one-man shows that aren’t in the least bit amusing, is astounding — one of the most flagrantly revolting protagonists I’ve ever spent time with in my moviegoing life.
“Remember the rickety, old fashioned idea of a lead character having some sort of relatable qualities that an audience might bond with? Even Al Pacino‘s Michael Corleone had relatables in The Godfather, Part II, and he was an ice man. Driver is playing a kind of sociopathic Jack the Ripper figure. The movie is mostly about him and barely pays attention to Marion Cotillard‘s Ann, an opera singer who marries Henry (and vice versa), and gives birth to their daughter.”
“Annette is a misanthropic rock opera about rabid egotism, demonic personality disorder, black soul syndrome, rage, alcoholism, murder, self-loathing, self-destruction.”
Critic who strongly disagrees: “For daring, imagination, energy, it’s the film of the year so far. Fuck populism.”
It’s been obvious to anyone with eyes, ears and half a brain that Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Jungle Cruise (Disney, 7.30) is both an homage and an insult to the lore of John Huston‘s The African Queen (’51).
Jungle Cruise costars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt have made no secret of the fact that their respective characters, “Skipper” Frank Wolff and Dr. Lily Houghton, are roughly modelled on Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer, the Queen characters played 70-odd years ago by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. And of course the basic set-ups are similar.
Of course, Serra and Cruise cowriters Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa never had the slightest intention in making the soon-to-open Disney release into any kind of African Queen companion piece. They intended, in fact, to lampoon (i.e., fool around with) the 1951 original, and thereby cheapen it to some extent.
Jungle Cruise is obviously adhering to a classic formula — a flawed male alpha figure in the front-and-center position with a spirited woman of refinement and sensitivity who steps in and gradually ups his game.
Jungle Cruise boilerplate: “Frank, a boat captain, takes his sister and her brother on a mission into a jungle to find a tree believed to possess healing powers. All the while, the trio must fight against dangerous wild animals and a competing German expedition.”
I’ve said this before, but the trailers have made it clear that Jungle Cruise is exactly the kind of ultra-synthetic, X-treme adventure, CG overload, Indiana Jones-aspiring, family-friendly megaplex film that, in my mind, is killing the idea of conveying real big-screen adventure. And no one gives a damn.
“I never really thought of it as a comedy,” Bogart tells Alter. “[My dad’s] relationship with Katie is funny, even if they don’t play it as funny.” Actually Hepburn and Bogart do play it for the amusement factor as far as that goes, and they do what they can to stoke the unusual romantic current that develops between them.
As you might expect, Alter gets into the p.c. factor — could The African Queen (which is set German East Africa in 1914) be remade today? By today’s standards, he notes, the most notable omission in Huston’s film “is the lack of any Black characters in significant roles.”
Alter declines to mention that Jungle Cruise, also set around the same time period (i.e., “early 20th Century”), has no major Black characters either — the costars are Jack Whitehall, Édgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti.
The other day HE commenter Bill McCuddy said he wants Patreon paywall posts to make him hard and wet. For $5 a month McCuddy wants thrills, backrubs, shocks, surprises, accelerations, sugar highs. He wants these posts to be the equivalent of visiting a water park in mid July or riding a pogo stick in the West Village or getting a Las Vegas strip club lap dance…okay, forget the lap dance as Bill is happily married. But certainly the HE equivalent of eating the most delicious greaseburger ever prepared in human history…a sizzling hot McCuddy burger, medium rare, covered in sautéed red onions, gently smeared with a dab of Russian dressing, red leaf lettuce, warm sesame seed bun…mouth watering, lip-smacking, blackened by flame!
McCuddy wants complimentary neck-wattle surgery, thrills, excitement, heavy breathing, face lifts…a feeling of being throttled into space or on some riveting journalistic adventure. He wants dance numbers, surfing contests, big waves, fast cars and motorcycles that rumble and grumble and go tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-TUK-TUK! McCuddy wants HE Patreon posts to make him feel like sticking his head out of the passenger window at 85 mph like Al Pacino and going “hoo-hahhh!”
McCuddy also wants HE Patreon posts to give him a perfect neck massage plus a combination manicure-and-pedicure, but at a discount. He also wants HE Patreon posts to shift the cultural tectonic plates…he wanrs them to be an in-depth N.Y. Times Magazine piece about climate change, or a Michael Wolff Times piece about the likelihood of Donald Trump running again in ’24. McCuddy wants value, emotion, intrigue, suspense.
And he doesn’t want any old-hat stuff…no memories or reflections about things or trends that happened 10 or 20 years ago or eternal truisms about whatever…he wants THE NEXT BIG THING, and right now…he wants dry cleaning, expensive socks, stock tips, stock options, car tune-ups, limo rides, flights to Belize and Switzerland and Dubai…and he wouldn’t mind special discounted deals on high-end Bruno Magli shoes.
Yesterday Paul Schraderwrote about admiring a waitress with “radiant” cafe au lait skin, and so he said “you have beautiful skin.” Paul’s wife and son were with him, and Paul’s not exactly a young buck on the prowl so he figured “I’m harmless so where’s the harm in sharing a discreet compliment?”
I’ll tell him where the harm is. The harm is in the fact that he’s an older white guy, and a decent percentage of urban progressive women (teens to mid 30s and perhaps beyond) would just as soon explode his life into smithereens as look at him. I’m not kidding. Guys like Paul Schrader are deer, and it’s deer hunting season everywhere right now, and if the Schraders of the world want to be dead all they have to do is give the “hunters” a reason to get out their high-powered social media rifles and fire at them.
There are only two options in your potential dealings with younger attractive women in any professional environment (including restaurants or bars), and that’s to (a) treat them with the utmost politeness and respect, and (b) think of them as overweight male Armenian garbage collectors who haven’t bathed in a couple of days.
Get this into your stupid thick head and keep it there: There are no attractive women out there — they don’t exist — and if you ignore this rule there’s a good chance you’ll be bruised, wounded or killed sooner or later. For if you convey the slightest appreciation of some aspect of their physical allure you are asking for trouble, and I mean potentially big trouble.
Tatiana says that complimenting a woman on her skin is too intimate if you’ve only just met her. Saying she has lovely skin isn’t quite like saying she has a great ass or nice breasts, but it’s in that vicinity. You can compliment a waitress on what she’s wearing — ring, bracelet, necklace, perfume — but no comments about her physicality. You can compliment a female relative or the wife of a friend on having nice skin, but not a waitress.
There’s only one safe way to tell a waitress that you approve of her, and that’s to leave her a large tip. Any other expression of approval will leave you open for Twitter assassination, Facebook sniping, TikTok takedowns, lawsuits, screaming fights in the parking lot and whatnot. Just shut up and order the food and that’s all. Remember — she’s an Armenian garbage collector, she’s wearing stained work overalls and lace-up work boots, and she weighs 285 pounds. Oh, wait…sorry!
If Sean Hannity offers tribute when a showbiz figure passes on, it’s fair to at least presume that the dear and departed might’ve been a rightwing dick.
Jackie Mason wasn’t always in that camp — in his ‘60s and ‘70s heyday Mason, a blunt-spoken Borscht belt comedian with a grim view of human nature and a rat-a-tat-tat patter, was a fairlyfunnyguy. He hurt his career when he apparently gavethefingertoEd Sullivan in March ‘64, but Mason hung in there. To each his own voice and style.
But came the 21st Century Mason became an Obamahater, hence the Hannity allegiance. Finding that view horrid, that’s when I cut him loose. Mason was 93.
I’ve been watching Leos Carax‘s Annette for a while…two hours and 19 minutes all in…but now I have to hit the Apple store. Update: Okay, it’s fixed.
Honestinitial impression: As they (Driver, Cotillard, Sparksguys, Carax, singers) were striding down the street at night while singing “May We Start?”, I wanted to see them attacked and eaten by snarling wolves. No, changed my mind — I wouldn’t want the wolves to hurt the kids or the female singers, and certainly not Cotillard. But definitely Russell and Ron Mael…that smug little half-smile that Russell wears and the way he folds his scarf around his neck as they leave the studio and stride out of the building and down the sidewalk, and especially director Leos Carax…the orchestrator of the whole thing. You might say I felt an instant animal dislike for this film.
