Michel Piccoli, the renowned French actor who seemed to costar in almost every noteworthy French film in the mid to late 20th Century, has passed at age 94. I’ve been trying to decide which Piccoli performance is my favorite, and I honestly can’t decide. Okay, maybe his weary, blocked painter in Jacques Rivette‘s La Belle Noiseuse (’91).
He was always a reliable, trustworthy presence. An actor who always seemed to calm things down. Always plainspoken, genuine, discreet.
And the late ’60s and ’70s, it seemed to me, was his peak era, although he kept going as a working actor through the next three succeeding decades. One of his last theatrical films, Lines of Wellington, opened in 2012.
Among Piccoli’s best films: Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Topaz (’69), Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City, Luis Buñuel‘s Diary of a Chambermaid (’64), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (’72) and The Phantom of Liberty (’74), Claude Chabrol‘s Wedding in Blood (’73), Claude Sautet‘s Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (’74), Marco Ferreri‘s La Grand Bouffe (’73), Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors (’12).
Yesterday I stumbled across a shot of Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed performing the final scene from Fred Zinneman‘s From Here To Eternity (’53). On a ship departing Honolulu by way of a sound stage. No one is more queer for behind-the-scenes snaps of this 1953 classic than myself, be they color or black-and-white. So I went hunting for all the decent ones I’ve ever seen or previously posted, and here they are. (The sixth from the top was taken by yours truly during the May 2001 Pearl Harbor junket.)
I’ve changed my mind about From Russia With Love. It’s now my #1 favorite early-era Bond film, followed by Dr. No. I still swear by that epic train-compartment fight between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw.
I am 98% certain that Ronan Farrow is full of shit when he maintains that Woody Allen sexually molested his younger adopted sister, Dylan Farrow — an alleged incident that happened in August 1992, when she was 7 and Ronan was 4. His insistence that all the Woody-exonerating evidence (which there’s a ton of) and the Woody-exonerating view of his adopted older brother Moses is not to be trusted is, I feel, inescapably deranged.
I also strongly suspect that he’s the biological son of Frank Sinatra, whom Mia Farrowonce speculated may “possibly” be his actual dad, and not Woody, whom Ronan doesn’t begin to even slightly resemble — looks, temperament, nothing.
Otherwise he’s obviously a respectedinvestigativejournalist who’s done some excellent work regarding Harvey Weinstein‘s history of sexual assault, and of course with the best-selling book “Catch and Kill“, which also accused NBC News of discrediting or dismissing his investigative work along these same lines.
But now Farrow himself is taking a bit of sniper fire. The bullets were fired yesterday by N.Y. Times reporter Ben Smith (former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed) in a piece titled “Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?“, and subheaded as follows: “He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time. But close examination reveals the weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism.”
In response to Smith’s article Robespierre purists are twitter-slamming the N.Y. Times for daring to go after a figure they regard as the triumphant crusading knight of wokester #MeToo journalism.
One reliable measure of wokester fervor is Vulture columnist Mark Harris, who tweeted today that access journalism is just as fraught with problems and prejudices as resistance journalism. Writer-comedian-podcaster Akila Hughes tweeted that Smith wrote the Farrow hit piece out of jealousy.
Journo pally: “It’s interesting where I think perhaps you and I differ on the significance here. You see the Robespierre of it all and I see the media monopolies twisting truth into pretzels of it all.
“I just watched a doc from around 2012 called Shadows of Liberty, which is the leftward view of how dangerous ‘fake news’ really is. Now that Trump has co-opted that clarion call, is the news any less fake that all the leftists were saying it was before Trump ever stumbled onto the public stage? ‘Resistance journalism’ is a fancy term for propaganda. Just like Fox imho.
Ken Osmond, otherwise known as Eddie Haskell, the Leave It To Beaver king of flagrantly insincere teenage suckuptitude, has bitten the dust. He was only 76 but we’re all specks of dust in the cosmic sprawl of backyard leaves, and when God comes along with a rake…scratch that. When your number’s up, it’s up.
No history of 1950s and early ’60s sitcoms would be complete without raising a glass to Haskell, a one-note but essential superstar character who was easily on par with Bob Denver‘s Maynard G. Krebs, Fess Parker‘s Davy Crockett and George Reeves‘ Superman.
Haskell became an iconic figure because every high-school sufferer knew and recognized him. Because high schools of the Eisenhower and JFK eras were unfortunately punctuated with Eddie Haskells…completely devious weasels, totally consumed with showing deference to authority figures with the most revolting kiss-ass phrases and kowtowings.**
What happened to Eddie Haskell when psychedelic substances took hold in the mid ’60s and everyone had to reckon with them one way or the other? What happened to him when he smoked DMT in his mid 20s? I’ll tell you what happened to him. He started rubbing his cordouroy-covered thighs and then stared at the ground beneath his feet, going “uh-oh…uh-ooohhhh”. And then he looked up at the night sky like Anthony Quinn‘s Zampano at the end of La Strada and said something like “aacckk-aacckk-aacckk!”
Osmond had a tough time finding new work because of the Haskell typecasting. He called it “a death sentence,” and he presumably knew whereof he spoke. He joined the LAPD in ’69, growing a moustache in order to hide the Haskell. On 9.20.80 Osmond was shot five times by a suspected car thief, but four bullets were absorbed by a bullet-proof vest and the fifth hit his belt buckle. He was placed on disability and eventually retired from the force in ’88 at the age of 45.
Two Osmond rumors went around in the 70s. One was that he was actually Alice Cooper, the other that he’d become porn star John Holmes, aka “Johnny Wadd.”
Wikiexcerpt: “Osmond returned to acting in 1983, reprising his role as Eddie Haskell in the CBS made-for-television movie StilltheBeaver, which followed the adult Cleaver boys, their friends, and their families. This led to the revival comedy series TheNewLeaveIttoBeaver, which premiered the following year and ran for four seasons — ’84 to ’89.
He continued to make television appearances throughout the ’80s and ’90s on Happy Days, Rags to Riches, and in the TV movie High School U.S.A. He also had a bit part in the 2016 indie movie Characterz. In 2011 Osmond began appearing as a celebrity spokesman for St. Joseph aspirin.
Osmond died earlier today. No cause of death revealed. Hugs and condolences to all concerned.
Spike Lee movies always confront, excite and challenge. The engine is always turned on. Excellent aspect-ratio immersion, haunting Chamber Bros. time tunnel, half early ’70s and half now. Oh, that Vietnam humidity, aroma and general atmosphere, which I’ve sampled first-hand on three separate occasions (’12, ’13, ’16), And those ghosts (including Chadwick Boseman‘s) swirling up and around and through. Pops on 6.12, or a little more than three weeks hence. 154 minutes.
The bright blue sky, rich sandy soil and mostly smog-free vistas remind me of similar capturings in the third act of John Boorman‘s Point Blank. When Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson meet at the wood-stained hilltop pad owned by Brewster (Carroll O’Connor), the same kind of views lie in the distance. Snapped early this afternoon.
It’s been 30 years since I saw Paul Schrader‘s The Comfort of Strangers (’90), and mostly I remember the tantalizing erotic tease and the spooky Venice atmosphere, and of course Christopher Walken‘s dry and deflecting perversity, a quality that he brings to pretty much every role. But I don’t remember what happens in the second half except that Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson get more and more entangled in a spider’s web spun by Walken and Helen Mirren. Honestly — my memory is a blank.
I do remember feeling disappointed that a script by Harold Pinter (based on an Ian McEwan short story) didn’t amount to more. It didn’t really pay off, or so I (don’t) recall.
Criterion will release a Strangers Bluray — a “restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Dante Spinotti” — on 8.18.20.
The silky, unctuous tone used by the narrator of this trailer just about ruins the whole thing:
Rod Lurie on Facebook: “Biden has already said he was going to pick a woman. Picking a POC…would be righteous and politically expedient move. Many of you know that my personal choice would be Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth (first Thai-American woman elected to Congress, first female double amputee in the Senate). But my antenna is now moving to Florida representative Val Demings, one of the impeachment managers during the prosecution of Donald Trump.”
HE response: Both are fine, presumably charismatic public servants, but why would Biden choose anyone who hasn’t been on the national stage? Why would he not choose someone whom Average Joes are at least slightly familiar with? Which is why Kamala Harris still makes sense. Or, if you will, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, whom I like and admire for having stood her ground against the “open up” bumblefucks.
Amy Klobuchar would be painted as an administrative blue meanie and therefore a negative factor. And the bumblefucks have never liked Elizabeth Warren so there’s that also.
Five and a half months ago: Sen. Kamala Harris, the only significant woman person of color in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, is dropping out. If Cory Booker was a realist he would drop out also — ditto Andrew Yang, Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar. They’re all finished, and they know it.
Next year’s Democratic presidential nominee is almost certainly going to be a stammering whitey-white male in his late ’70s, which means the vp pick could turn out to be…Harris? Although the smarter vp pick would be Buttigieg — running with a 37-year-old genius would offset the doddering factor.
Here we are in the pre-primary Democratic presidential home stretch and it’s an all-Anglo race now with three post-retirement-age poll champs — Droolin’ Joe Biden, Stubborn Old Goat Bernie and nagging schoolmarm Elizabeth — and a grand total of one sane, super-brilliant, sensible, catching-on candidate who’s under the age of 65 — Mayor Pete.
But of course, the South Bend Mayor is doomed to come up short because of the determination of African American voters to stick us with the 77 year-old Biden, who’s going to gaffe and stumble and brain-mulch his way through the primaries and during the campaign…can’t wait for that endless agony.
If anyone outside of the black community thinks Typewriter Joe is really and truly the man to lead the country into the 2020s…God help their synapses. If there’s really and truly no way out of nominating a septugenarian, I would much rather see Michael Bloomberg run against Trump.
Harris never broke out poll-wise. She was constantly in the lower single digits (in the same general realm with Yang, Booker, Castro and Klobuchar). She had that one surge following her busing contretemps with Biden during…what was it, the first or second debate?
