I’ll soon be catching a 3.22 screening of Jonathan Parker and Marlo McKenzie‘s Carol Doda Topless At The Condor. Due respect to the life and legend of the late Carol Doda (i.e., the first-ever topless club dancer), but I’m mostly interested in the bizarre death of Condor Club manager Jimmy Ferrozzo. It happened right around Thanksgiving of 1983. The “beefy” 40-year-old Ferrozzo was crushed to death by a white, hydraulically-lifted piano while he was doing the deed with one of the club’s strippers, 23 year-old Theresa Hill.
HE wants Poor Things‘ Emma Stone to win the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night, and if not Stone then Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Huller…please.
I’m just looking forward to a day in which identity won’t count for that much in Oscar voting. If you dip into your soul and bring the stuff that matters, then you’re eligible to be nominated and perhaps even likely to win. Quality, quality, quality of delivery.
Academy members voting to reject commonplace prejudice or blanket dismissals in decades or centuries past is primarily about them and not the actor or performance in question. Wokesters have been playing this trendy little game for six or seven years now, and it’s time to shut it down.
When the day comes that quality is valued more than equity or virtue-signalling, actors like Lily Gladstone will have to sink or swim based on their own chops, instincts and abilities…whether or not they can bring the necessary craft, depth and soul…a performance constructed from deep within or not at all.
Does anyone think that Da’Vine Joy Randolph‘s locked-in Best Supporting Actress win has anything whatsoever to do with identity? Okay, maybe a little but she’s been winning all season long because of how good she is in Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers…period. I knew she was a slam-dunk Oscar nominee a half-hour after the film had begun screening in Telluride’s Werner Herzog theatre. I leaned over and muttered this to Sasha Stone.
Does anyone think that May December‘s Charles Melton was an early Best Supporting Actor favorite because he rode an identity horse (South Korean lineage + being a symbolic stand-in for underaged victims of sexual assault)? You’d better believe it, and thank God that nag gave out on him.
Does anyone believe that Sayonara‘s Miyoshi Umeki won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar over identity, way the hell back in 1958? She won because she played a selfless, devotional wife who died (along with Air Force husband Red Buttons**) due to racial prejudice. Plus her performance was significantly more affecting than the ones given by Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party), Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution), Hope Lange (Peyton Place) and Diane Varsi (Peyton Place).
I realize that Gladstone’s identity campaign has stirred a sizable army of woke gladhanders and that the odds favor her winning, but this shit has to stop. It really does.
Posted by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy on 3.6.24: “Can Gladstone win the Oscar despite not being nominated by BAFTA and her role being a supporting turn? She appears in less than 1/3 of Killers runtime (56 minutes), whereas Stone is practically in every scene of Poor Things. If Gladstone had been campaigned in the Supporting category then she’d already have that Oscar in the bag.”
In HE’s judgment, 25 exceptional, high-quality films were released in 1959. (There were another 9 or 10 that were good, decent, not bad.) By today’s standards, here’s how the top 25 rank:
I was amazed how cranked and excited I was by yesterday’s Super Bowl duel. I haven’t felt so crazily absorbed by a game of any kind, ever.
And — this is an Adam Carolla thing — I was reminded again about how wonderfully un-woke the sporting world is…no equity, no race bullshit, no DEI, no POCs complaining about not being shown the proper deference or accusing whiteys of fucking them over.
The players last night were on the field because they were good, period. They had proven their worth during the just-concluded season and were totally trusted by their coaches to perform well and to their utmost, and that’s all anyone cared about.
What’sthatexpressionagain? Oh, yeah, right — “merit over equity.”
Another thing about sporting competitions is that everyone accepts is that one team or another (or one golfer or tennis player or whomever) is going to lose, and that’sthat. Life is hard, competition is demanding and certain competitors are going to feel gutted when they lose. But that’s life.
Imagine if Hollywood and the Oscars were to operate with this attitude. Talent matters! Only the best! Industry politics and high school popularity sentiments have always been a thing but equity standards are a whole different game —- an obstruction, a corrective.
Ayo Edebiri to Nikki Haley: “I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?”
Haley to Edebiri: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”
I’m furious at Megyn Kelly for her friendly coverage of Donald Trump, but I feel complete relaxation with Adam Carolla and I don’t care how the HE commentariat responds to this.
Key quote #1: “All roads lead to narcissism.” Key analogy: Passion fruit iced tea vs. regular iced tea.
MaxMartin‘s “&Juliet” delivers an upfront queer trans makeover and sell-job and not a mere gay subplot along these lines.
A pro-level B’way entertainment, of course, but at the same time a kind of spirited cultural indoctrination session for the tourist rube audience by way of a “join us in celebrating who and what we are” Tin Pan Alley progressive (LGBTQ) agenda, which goes hand in hand, incidentally, with the current “Some Like It Hot” musical.
Billy Wilder’s 1959 screen comedy, ahead of its time in terms of acknowledging cross-dressing and gender behaviors while being strictly hetero, was hetero Broadway musicalized as “Sugar” back in ‘72 — now the same story has been converted into an ecstatic celebration of gender fluidity and queer identity and yaddah yaddah.
https://somelikeithotmusical.com/
Harvey Fierstein’s “Kinky Boots,” which I caught 11 years ago, sold a roughly similar bill of goods.
…for HE to post regular recollections of what the film business looked, sounded, felt and tasted like beforetheterror — i.e., before 2017 but mostly focused on the glorious ‘90s (the indierevolution), the aughts (last stabs before superhero plague) and the early to mid teens (ZeroDarkThirty, 12Years A Slave, Drive, TheSocialNetwork, Moneyball, Carol, ManchesterByTheSea).
Inotherwords: rather than overdose on cursing and condemning the present darkness (although I will never abandon this hard but necessary duty) it might be better to invest more energy into shining a light upon the above-mentioned goodtimes (‘90 to ‘17 or just shy of three decades) and thereby possibly inspire a longing for films that aspire to more than just delivering “content” as well as persuading at least some of the fiercely progressive descendants of Maximilian Robespierre and Josef Stalin to possibly ease up on their social justice crusades and just…you know, try to make good movies that are less “instructive”?
Then again I wouldn’t want to descend into the pit of too-much-nostalgia…all right, fuck it, I’m not changing the game.
Oscar Poker had been moribund for two weekends, sidelined by tech issues and whatnot. Obviously time to record again, and so Jeff and Sasha went to town on a rainy Sunday afternoon. And here it is.
Points hit:
How the Oscars lost their brand.
All hail Adam Carolla’s spot-on analysis about sports vs. award season and politics.
Leave the World Behind – a Netflix movie exec produced by the Obamas, and whether or not that’s creatively upfront of agenda-driven.
Having freedom of mind as opposed to being “in the bubble.”
Complimenting Jeff for not being an Oscar whore.
Jeff’s ongoing annoyances with Lily Gladstone and Barry Keoghan.
The Best Picture standouts, according to Jeff — Poor Things, Maestro, The Holdovers
The Boys in the Boat is an “old-fashioned” but very well-made and deeply likable film.
How Barbenheimer signified the return of “traditionalism”.
The 4K Titanic Bluray is great.
Was Joan Baez molested by her dad? What is she trying to say?
Therapy is ruining everything.
How erasing boundaries led to helicotper parenting in the 90s, which led to “safetyism.”
Why is Todd Haynes’ May December so popular with woke-bubble critics?
The romantic intrigue in Phillip Noyce's Fast Charlie (Vertical, 10.8) is the thing. The blam-blam is fine the laid-back, settled-down relationship drama between Pierce Brosnan‘s Charlie, a civilized, soft-drawl hitman who loves fine cooking, and Morena Baccarin‘s Marcie, a taxidermist with a world-weary, Thelma Ritter-ish attitude about things...that's what holds you. Is he too old for her? (Call it a quarter-century age gap.) Does it matter if he is somewhat? Nobody makes any overt moves, but you can feel the simmering.
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This almost felt like a fitting crescendo as the film was widely regarded as a crisis itself, albeit a “what the hell happened?” kind. The final production tab was $27 million, or roughly $275 million in 2023 dollars — a startling level of exorbitance.
Bounty had been shooting for two years, partly under the directorial command of Sir Carol Reed but mostly Lewis Milestone, who didn’t get along wih star Marlon Brando and vice versa. A few months earlier the film had been publicized as a cost-overrun disaster, particularly by a June 1962 Saturday Evening Post cover story, written by Bill Davidson, that identified Brando as the principal culprit.
Production was marked by constant tempest (Reed either quit or was let go, and Milestone, his successor, also left under turbulent circumstances), largely, according to Davidson, due to Brando’s egoistic big-star behavior. Brando sued the Post for $5 million over claims that the article had wrongfully damaged his professional reputation. It did, in fact, do that.
Filming was almost as prolonged and costly as the $31 million Cleopatra, which would open seven months later in June 1963.
I wouldn’t call Mutiny on the Bounty a flawed film as much as a “good but not quite there” one. It’s actually a well-written, handsomeiy produced, eye-filling wow for the first 70% or 75%, and Bronislau Kaper‘s score is inescapably rousing in a crash-boom-bang sense.
I would give it an 8.5 grade up until and including the mutiny sequence. But the tension flies out the window after the mutiny, and the remainder of the film is just okay. And Brando’s (i.e., Fletcher Christian‘s) high-minded urging that he and the crew should return to England to plead their case? Totally absurd. Tantamount to suicide. I agree with the decision by Richard Harris‘s Mills and other crew members to burn the ship after Brando suggests this hair-brained notion.
The act that ignites the mutiny scene as Brando’s Fletcher Christian tries to give fresh H20 to a thirsty seaman, and Howard’s Cpt. Bligh expresses his opposition.
Say what you will about Bounty‘s problems — historical inaccuracies and inventions, Brando’s affected performance as Christian, the floundering final act. The fact remains that this viscerally enjoyable, critically-dissed costumer is one of the the most handsome, lavishly-produced and beautifully scored films made during Hollywood’s fabled 70mm era, which lasted from the mid ’50s to the late ’60s.
It has a flamboyant “look at all the money we’re spending” quality that’s half-overbaked and half-absorbing. It’s pushing a certain pounding, big-studio swagger.
There’s a way to half-excuse Bounty for doing this. It was made, after all, at a time when self-important bigness was regarded as a kind of aesthetic attribute unto itself, with large casts, extended running times, dynamic musical scores (overtures, entr’actes, exit music) and intermissions all par for the course. And there’s no denying that a lot of skilled craftsmanship and precision went into this manifestation.
Bounty definitely has first-rate dialogue and editing, and three or four scenes that absolutely get the pulse going (leaving Portsmouth, rounding Cape Horn, the mutiny, the burning ship). And I happen to like and respect Brando’s performance — it gets darker and sadder as the film goes along — and you can’t say Trevor Howard‘s Captain Bligh doesn’t crack like a bullwhip. (Bosley Crowther‘s review said his emoting was imbued with “wire and scrap iron”, and that Brando’s came from “tinsel and cold cream”.) And Richard Harris and Hugh Griffith are fairly right-on. And everybody likes the topless Tahitian girls.
I’d forgotten how foppy and buffoonish Brando’s Fletcher Christian character is, and how frequently his contentious relationship with Trevor Howard‘s Captain Bligh is played for easy laughs during the first 100 minutes.
The extremely wide 2.76 to 1 Ultra Panavision image, shot by Robert Surtees and derived from the original 70mm elements, is really quite beautiful, and the colors are full and luscious.
My difficulties with the jokey humor aside, I have to acknowledge the “make love to that damn daughter of his” scene between Howard and Brando, and pay my respects to the way Brando pauses ever so slightly before and after he says the word “fight”. It’s the film’s wittiest moment — the only line that still makes me laugh out loud.
The decision not to offer a “making of” documentary on the Bounty Bluray was unfortunate, given that Mutiny on the Bounty‘s production history was one of the most expensive and out-of-control in Hollywood history, and therefore worth recounting for history.
Fox Home Video included an ambitious making-of-Cleopatra doc along with their Cleopatra disc, and it’s a far more engaging thing to watch than the film itself. Too bad Warner Home Video didn’t follow suit. Laurent Bouzereau or someone on his level could’ve really gone to town with it.
Director-screenwriter friendo: “Biden somewhat reminds me of when Playboy magazine, competing with FHM and Maxim, tried to make Hugh Hefner relevant to a younger demographic and couldn’t. He came off to young guys as a licentious old man.
“Dr. Caroline Heldman is someone I’d seen on CNN a few times, occasionally billed as a Democratic advisor, but what struck me is to see on her social media accounts that she also moonlights as a rock singer. She’s a liberal Buckaroo Banzai.
“This collision of politics and show business, as well as a generational gap, underscores how Biden, aside from being old, also doesn’t have any sort of dynamic personality that can negate age. Trump’s bombast is immature and grotesque, and yet it makes him seem bizarrely energetic.
“Gavin Newsom would perfectly dovetail into the sensibilities of Heldman’s era.”