Herewith a five-part Showtime docuseries on L.A.s The Comedy Store, directed by none other than HE’s own Mike Binder (Black and White, Reign Over Me, The Upside of Anger) and launching on 10.4. Boilerplate: “…brings to life the legends, heartbreak and history created at The Comedy Store, which opened in 1972 in West Hollywood and operated by Mitzi Shore until her death in 2018. TCS was an early breakout forum for dozens of big-time comics (Jay Leno, David Letterman, Garry Shandling, Jim Carrey). As a Comedy Store alum and former stand-up comic, Binder spotlights one of pop culture’s great laboratories with never-before-seen footage and incisive, emotional interviews with Whoopi Goldberg, Howie Mandel, Michael Keaton, Andrew Dice Clay, Whitney Cummings, etc.
David Fincher‘s Mank is obviously something else. Consider the rapier wit, the pedigree, the Erik Messerschmidt cinematography, the yesteryearness. I’ve read an early draft of the script, and I know it’ll be brilliant. And I can’t adequately express how the prospect of spending two-plus hours with the God-like Herman Mankiewicz delights me to the core.
Even merged with the physicality of the puffy-faced, pot-bellied Gary Oldman in those 1940s baggy suits, tent-like dress shirts and fat ties, I tingle like Peter Ustinov‘s Lentulus Batiatus. Seriously.
This might turn out to be one of the greatest “head” movies of the 21st Century, although in a 1960s Bob Rafelson sense. Seeing it stoned may be a requirement.
What I don’t understand is why Fincher didn’t cast Mank with a Hamilton attitude or…you know, with the liberated, cast-off-the-old-ways, rethink-the-musty-past mindset of Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood or Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Wokesterfield. Where in this old time Hollywood-white-guy realm of are the African Americans, Latinos and Asians, Mr. Fincher? How can we hope to move forward as a culture if we don’t cast period films according to our own present-tense values and determinations?
The problem is not just Fincher but also Joel and Ethan Coen, who notoriously ignored the Khmer Rouge casting philosophy when they made Hail, Caesar!. Just ask Jen Yamato — she explained it fully four years ago.
If there’s a Bluray or an HD-streaming version of Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergey Urusevsky‘s Soy Cuba (’64), I can’t find it. A Russian-funded documentary intended to be pro-Cuban propaganda, Soy Cuba emerged as a sensual celebration of cinema (the long shots are brilliant) in the vein of Sergei Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico!. An ambivalent exploration of Cuban culture, Soy Cuba half-revelled in hotel luxury, swimming pools and bikini-clad hotties — not what the Soviets were looking for.
An HD restoration happened in 2019, but it’s not currently streamable via Criterion or Amazon or any of the others. (Or so it appears.) It used to be accessible via Prime Video but has been withdrawn. Oscilloscope used to have a DVD version (who wants 480p?) but this has also been withdrawn.
I finally forced myself to watch David Ayer‘s The Tax Collector…yeesh. Not by any stretch a career highlight for Ayer, whose best effort as a director-writer so far has been Fury, which I didn’t even care for all that much. Mostly an ultra-violent wallow, like everyone has said. What a hellish realm. Hit me over the head with a shovel.
But I didn’t mind Shia LaBeouf‘s “racist” performance as Creeper, a psychopathic collection guy working for Jimmy Smits‘ crime lord, “Wizard.” At the very least he’s delivering with a certain impudent energy mixed with a willingness to die on the spot.
We all understand the rule about white guys not being allowed to portray POCs and cisgenders not being allowed to play trans folk, but there’s a part of me that admires the “fuck you” attitude that Ayer and LaBeouf obviously embraced in creating this particular “Creeper.”
I think any actor should be allowed to portray any character of whatever ethnic stripe. It all boils down to “can you sell it…can you be it…do you have the bravery and conviction?”
In other words, I was kidding when I wrote the headline for this post. I was pretending to be a wokester asshole.
Five or six days ago Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn accused LaBeouf of giving “a cartoonish and culturally insensitive performance” that amounted to “a two-bit Latino burlesque.”
Last month Ayer said on Twitter that LaBeouf wasn’t delivering a “brownface” parody but playing “a white character who is influenced by latinx culture. Which is a really important answer. Shia is playing a whiteboy who grew up in the hood. This is a Jewish dude playing a white character. Also the only white dude in the movie”.
But again, the idea of LaBeouf tattooing his entire chest and stomach area for this role….what an asinine thing to do! What a way of spitting upon your God-given biological temple.
The forthcoming Hulu series Woke is about a mild-mannered African American cartoonist (“keep it light”) who becomes ultra-attuned to systemic racism after he gets beaten up by cops. Everywhere he looks and everything he hears tells him that the world is not what it seems and that “the fix is in” against people of color. Or something close to that.
This is a righteous concept, but it’s a bit out-of-time to call the series Woke because black-dude woke was a thing about…what, eight or ten years ago? We all know that since Trump’s election in late ’16 “woke” stopped alluding to hip-black-guy consciousness and became a “white progressives committed to destroying the careers of non-wokesters in order to stop the twin scourges of racism and sexism” thang…Khmer Rouge, cancel culture, Left Twitter, resurrecting the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre, the New McCarthyism in academia, etc.
So I’m sorry but Woke is out of step with the times. I’m not saying that hip African Americans embracing a “woke” perspective isn’t valid. Obviously it is. I’m saying that the term “woke” began to be co-opted by the white lunatic progressive left four years ago.
Woke arrives on Hulu on September 9. Lamorne Morris plays Keef, the lead character. Sasheer Zamata, Blake Anderson and T. Murph costar.
Posted on 10.3.10: In Secretariat (Disney, 10.8), Diane Lane gives an earnest, steady-as-she-goes performance as Penny Tweedy, the conservative housewife who risked financial ruin and defied her husband (Dylan Walsh) and brother (Dylan Baker), who wanted to sell their inherited horse farm for a quick profit, in order to nurture, train and place into competition one of the most celebrated racehorses in history.
The horse was initially named Big Red but eventually became Secretariat — legendary winner of the 1973 Triple Crown. And it’s a thrill to watch (and hear) him run. The film sometimes gives you that amazing charge with exceptional you-are-there photography and sound. But Secretariat is as rote and regimented and corny as Kansas in August, and I don’t see it selling many tickets beyond its base constituency — squares, tourists and hardcore horse-racing fans.
In short, I loved the story of Secretariat more than the movie. Actually, not the story so much as the horse-racing footage. The problem (and the movie has more than one) is that director Randall Wallace uses every trick in the book to make it seem touching, suspenseful, a cliffhanger…a story that massages your heart. Every. Trick. In. The. Book. And you’re not “in” the groove of Secretariat as much as fully aware of everything he’s trying to do to crank you up. You never forget you’re watching a Randall Wallace family-values movie for the schmoes — i.e., white people who stroll around in plaid shorts and white socks and La Crosse golf shirts, and who have an allegiance for old-fashioned Wonder Bread conservatism.
Everything is so right down the middle. And for me, Wallace’s directing style is too tight and straight-laced. There’s a little cut-loose dance sequence when Lane and her team are shown bopping and grooving to a ’70s soul tune, but Wallace doesn’t know how to cut and bump to this kind of thing, or at least not very well. Nor is he especially good at depicting early ’70s counter-culture kids and their behavior. It feels fake, “performed” — like some 1971 Methodist minister’s view of how hippie kids dressed and spoke and acted.
Lane has three moments that play exceptionally — (a) an argument/firing scene with a horse-farm manager in the first act, (b) a moment when she looks into the eyes of Secretariat to see if he’s ready to run, and (c) a financial face-off scene between she, Walsh and Baker. Except the latter scene is brought home by the housekeeper (Margo Martindale) when she spells out the specifics of their father’s will. A solid award-worthy performance needs three powerful moments, not two and a half. Lane’s performance wants to be as good as Sandra Bullock‘s in The Blind Side, but doesn’t quite get there. Sorry.
And Mike Rich‘s script doesn’t really give her any huge killer moments. Solid moments, but not great ones. The staring-at-Secretariat moment might be the best of all. Lane has a hold on the heart and spirit and determination that surely drove her character forward. Nice lady and mildly hot under the circumstances. But why did that wig she was wearing have to look so much like a wig? Don’t hairdressers know how to make wigs a little mussy and more natural-looking?
I quickly lost patience with Scott Glenn, who plays Lane’s ailing dad. Alzheimer’s, a stroke….die, you fucking boring actor!
From Lisa Resper‘s 7.29 CNN story titled “This Year’s Emmy Nominees Are Pretty Diverse, But Not Everyone Is Happy“:
“In introducing the nomination ceremony on Tuesday, Television Academy chairman and chief executive officer Frank Scherma touched on the extraordinary times we are living in amid a global pandemic and a cultural reckoning with racism. ‘This year we are also bearing witness to one of the greatest fights for social justice in history,’ he said. ‘And it is our duty to use this medium for change.’
“Viewers will be watching to see if that change extends to not just nominations, but also wins for people of color.”
HE to Select Friendos: Do you think yesterday’s Emmy noms included sufficient numbers of POC filmmakers and performers? Put more bluntly, were there any POC creators and performers who didn’t get nominated? Perhaps a few but none that I noticed. And what about the trans community along with the LGBTQs?
“Seriously — the Emmy noms represented such an avalanche in terms of virtue-signalling ‘play it safe’ p.c. theology…such an emphasis upon POC and LGBTQ contributions that one is tempted to ask, ‘Is there any interest these days in determining the finest work being created, or is it ALL about kowtowing to the current socio-political SJW correct-think?’
“Did you notice what the top film of 2020 was as of last month, according to Jordan Ruimy’s critics poll? Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods. What does that tell you?
“HE reaction: ‘Was the nation’s recent cultural and political uprising (George Floyd protests, Black Lives Matter, a repressive response on Donald Trump‘s part) a factor in critics supporting Lee’s film, especially given Lee’s artful, montage-like editing that blends past and present turmoils? That’s my suspicion but you tell me.’
“My actual suspicion is that the critics in Ruimy’s poll were submitting to the moment, or more precisely the progressive imperative. They’re playing it safe because we’re living through a climate of terror, and nobody wants to be accused of anything, much less go to the guillotine.
“You can count on your fingers how many critics are telling it really straight and true these days, and how many are (a) reviewing films positively because the films say the right things or espouse the right kind of p.c. values, and (b) reviewing films somewhat negatively because they say the wrong things, etc.
“In the old pre-COVID days the percentage of critics who could be counted upon to state opinions without regard to political correctness was fairly low. Now it’s even lower.”
The other day I was sharing a regret with a friend about Twitter’s general lack of interest in basic English grammar, or disdain for it even. The submental abbreviations (“ur” instead of “your“…stupid shit like that) have a way of migrating into everyday writing and speech even. Languages have always been movable feasts, of course. Constantly evolving, adapting, augmenting. But I draw the line at “ur.”
All most writers understand that disciplined, well-honed grammar is a beautiful thing. Diligent and respectful submission to (or the artful manipulation of) the English language (or whatever your native tongue may be) is a matter of character, pride and creativity. On the other hand you don’t want to sound like you never paid attention in school.
Over the last few years there’s been a college campus movement to resist this viewpoint and generally go easy on correct English grammar. The idea has been to allow students of whatever ethnic background to write and speak according to their native cultures and infliuences (Ebonics, slang, street grammar) rather than conform to grammatical white-man standards. The idea is that grading and good grammar are tools of white supremacy.
Consider a possibly accurate College Fix article, dated 7.20.20 and written by Alex Frank of Texas Christian University, titled “Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar ‘in solidarity with Black Lives Matter’“.
According to Frank, this initiative was spelled out by Rebecca Walkowitz, the English Department chair at Rutgers University, and sent to faculty, staff and students in an email. A copy was allegedly sent to Frank.
This morning I sent a copy of Frank’s article to Walkowitz and asked if it was accurate or not. I’m currently giving Frank the benefit of the doubt. If Walkowitz writes back and says his reporting is biased or inaccurate I’ll fix this post accordingly.
[7.24 update: Walkowitz never responded.]
Titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” Walkowitz’s email allegedly states that “the ongoing and future initiatives that the English Department has planned are a ‘way to contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color.’
“One of the initiatives is described as ‘incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.
The email allegedly states that “this approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage.”
It also reportedly “encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
Boiled down (and please correct me if I’m wrong), Walkowitz is more or less telling faculty, staff and students (and I’m passing this along in a satirical, loose-shoe sense) that using “ur” instead of “your” is cool. And all the other abbreviations. Oh, and tell those stuffy white grammar fascists to take a hike.
The Polish-born novelist Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, Youth, Nostromo, Outcast of the Islands) didn’t speak English until his 20s, but he gradually became one of the greatest English-language novelists of all time. His prose was impeccable, and I am telling you that Joseph Conrad is quite literally rolling in his grave right now.
Right now Khmer Rouge cadres — cancel-culture, street-demonstrating, statue-toppling BLM rage junkies — are doing their level best to persuade Average Joe voters to give Orange Plague another term, despite all the evil he’s unleashed over the last three-plus years.
Wokesters have basically gifted Trump with a substantial campaign issue, one that worked for Richard Nixon 52 years ago (“lawnorder”) and which could conceivably gain in traction: “Vote for me and I will protect you from the rude, lawless, whiteside-wearing rabble that wants to trash your storefronts, defund your police departments and teach ‘The 1619 Project‘ in your children’s classrooms.”
While it’s common knowledge that Middle Americans despise p.c. fanatics, I don’t happen to believe that Joe Lunchbucket pays enough attention to the insanity coming out of Left Twitter for this to seriously affect matters. Others, however, feel it might.
Consider a new Ryan Lizza Politico article titled “Americans Tune In To ‘Cancel Culture’ — And Don’t Like What They See.” The results of a Morning Consult poll suggests that hinterlanders share “significant concern” about this.
Excerpt: “Twenty-seven percent of voters said cancel culture had a somewhat positive or very positive impact on society, but almost half (49%) said it had a somewhat negative or very negative impact.
“While online shaming may seem like a major preoccupation for the public if you spend a lot of time on Twitter, only 40% of voters say they have participated in cancel culture and only one in 10 say they participate ‘often.’ It appears to be more of a liberal pursuit: Half of Democrats have shared their dislike of a public figure on social media after they did something objectionable, while only a third of Republicans say they have.
I realize that the anger over Trump and Barr’s militarized goons detaining protestors has given a new impetus to the Oregon street protests, but what kept these protests going before the goon troops arrived?
The coast-to-coast incendies of late May and early June have obviously chilled. BLM-ers in major cities across the nation have decided to downshift for the time being and take a breather.
But not in Portland. Or, to go by today’s reporting, Seattle. So what needs to happen before somebody calls a time out? Or is this a new and permanent way of life?
Do Portland protestors want some sort of no-confidence election? Mass resignations from local white officials? Resignations of the entire Portland police force so the city can be Camden-ized?
Demonstrators marching recently in Portland. [Photo credit: Dave Killen/The Oregonian, via Associated Press.]
NOW: Rioters are looting an Amazon store in Seattle
pic.twitter.com/Eb3IWBgX78— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 19, 2020
Two days ago N.Y. Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel noted that the Portland street demonstrations, ignited by the Minneapolis murder of George Floyd on 5.25, have been happening for 50 days straight. (53 as of today.) Warzel wrote about the stress of being in constant combat, and of likely PTSD down the road. Will the Portland actions still be going after 75 days? 100?
Posted on 6.3.20: “Terrible convulsive traumas have sadly happened to this country from time to time. But they’ve never been long-term. A few days or a week, and then everyone began to gradually emerge and resume basic routines.
“JFK was shot on Friday, 11.22.63 and buried on Monday, 11.25. Four days of emotional gloom and devastation. And on Tuesday, 11.26, the world slowly started again. The grief never went away, of course, but the wheels of commerce and culture began to turn.
“John Lennon was murdered on 12.8.80. The shockwaves of anguish were devastating. Everyone wept. But after a few days or a week, the clouds began to dissipate.
“The Los Angeles Rodney King riots lasted for six days (4.29.92 to 5.4.92). The aftermath seeped and simmered. Nobody ever forgot what happened. But on the seventh day the world began to move on.
…you must be some kinda clueless whitebread whose mom never served Spanish dishes. I’ve loved Spanish-Mexican-TexMex cuisine in restaurants all my life, but over the last four decades I’ve never even glanced at a can of Goya beans while shopping. Not once. Until the Trump-Ivanaka thing came up I’ve never considered the option. In any event, cancel Goya beans! Send that company into bankruptcy! I’m serious. I shouldn’t say this as I despise cancel culture, but every rule is subject to amendments.
Most of us understand “critical race theory“, which holds that white privilege and white supremacy have been long ingrained in American society.
And many of us have read or at least skimmed the N.Y. Times‘ “1619 Project“, which basically says that the history of the United States and the character of its paleface citizens have been defined by racism and white supremacy all along, and that this poison is embedded in our social root structure**, and that whether they realize it or not whitebreads need to submit to intensive anti-racist training to even begin to fix things.
These claims and interpretations have mostly been the concern of cultural elites over the last 15 or 20 years, but now, through the good graces of Oprah Winfrey, the New York Times and Lionsgate, a series of feature films and television shows based on “The 1619 Project” will eventually become a mass-market reality.
There are many academics who’ve disputed the accuracy of “The 1619 Project” (including a group of African American academics who comprise “The 1776 Project“), but I’m going to rely upon New York magazine’s Andrew Sullivan, who posted an argument on 9.3.19.
His piece was mainly about the radical culture of the N.Y. Times. It was titled “How The New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism.” Here’s an excerpt:
“The New York Times, by its executive editor’s own admission, is increasingly engaged in a project of reporting everything through the prism of white supremacy and critical race theory, in order to ‘teach’ its readers to think in these crudely reductionist and racial terms.
“That’s why ‘The 1619 Project’ wasn’t called, say, a ‘special issue’ but a ‘project’. It’s as much activism as journalism.
“And that’s the reason I’m dwelling on this a few weeks later. I’m constantly told that critical race theory is secluded on college campuses, and has no impact outside of them — and yet the newspaper of record, in a dizzyingly short space of time, is now captive to it. Its magazine covers the legacy of slavery not with a variety of scholars, or a diversity of views, but with critical race theory, espoused almost exclusively by black writers, as its sole interpretative mechanism.
“Don’t get me wrong. I think that view deserves to be heard. The idea that the core truth of human society is that it is composed of invisible systems of oppression based on race (sex, gender, etc.), and that liberal democracy is merely a mask to conceal this core truth, and that a liberal society must therefore be dismantled in order to secure racial/social justice is a legitimate worldview. (That view that ‘systems’ determine human history and that the individual is a mere cog in those systems is what makes it neo-Marxist and anti-liberal.)
“But I sure don’t think it deserves to be incarnated as the only way to understand our collective history, let alone be presented as the authoritative truth, in a newspaper people rely on for some gesture toward objectivity.
“This is therefore, in its over-reach, ideology masquerading as neutral scholarship.
“The NYT [has chosen] a neo-Marxist rather than liberal path to make a very specific claim: that slavery is not one of many things that describe America’s founding and culture, [but] is the definitive one.
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