It’s definitely not welcome news that departing Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang is joining The New Yorker as its senior film critic, or at least as a co-senior bigmouth with Richard Brody (i.e., “the ArmondWhite of the far left”).
Chang is a brilliant, first-rate critic who has passed along many valuable judgments and perceptions over the years. But over the past six or seven annums he’s become a bit of a social justice warrior (at least in my eyes) and something of an identity ideologue. Example: Last October Chang pannedTheHoldovers over a single depiction of racist cruelty between two minor characters.
The Chang hire means two things, and both are breaking my heart.
One, The New Yorker film desk is now doubly woked-up and, in my opinion, half-fanatical. I’ve been an occasional fan of Brody’s essays, but there’s no forgetting that in his 10.13.22 Tar review he actually doubted the existence of wokeism and cancel culture. That, good sir, is fanaticism.
And two, NewYorker film critic Anthony Lane, hired by Tina Brown 31 years ago and one of my absolute favorite wordsmith smart-asses ever since, has been kickedupstairs by editor David Remnick.
Lane will be “expanding to writing [on] a wider range of topics,” Remnick has announced — a polite way of saying that Lane’s senior stripes have been torn off.
This is not the end of my online NewYorker subscription, but Remnick is downgrading and more or less humiliating one of the very few non-woke (or mostly non-woke) critics of a senior status. Not cool and rather shitty in fact.
David Rothkopf to Steve Schmidt: “The irrationality of the degree of support for [The Beast]…despite his criminality, his control over the Republican party seems stronger than it’s ever been….even with all these trials, even with all we know about him….rational objections to this anti-democratic authoritarian don’t seem to hold.”
That’s because Trumpism isn’t rational — it’s emotional, primal, boiling in the blood. And Rothkopf doesn’t even allude to this.
Far-right Trump supporters believe that over the last several years U.S. culture has been under assault by the woke scourge (currently manifested by Biden’s kneejerk deference to diverse tribalism, equity favored over meritocracy, scolding white people for being white, trans values in elementary schools, Dylan Mulvaney, hordes of immigrants surging through the Mexican border), and they see him as the only hardcore bully-boy enemy of this scourge…the only guy who is saying “fuck this noise” without qualification.
Is there merit to this general thesis or analysis? To varying degrees, yes. Is it worth electing a fascist dictator in order to put a stop to this scourge, or at least to try and reverse or suppress it? Of course it wouldnt be worth it. Putting Trump back into the White House would be insanity. But like I just said, the Trump bonfire isn’t about rationality.
My first thought while watching TheIronClaw was “my God, what has Zac Efron done to himself? He looks like the Incredible Hulk…not to mention that awful Prince Valiant hair…good heavens.”
Professional wrestling is a joke. I’ve always hated the crude theatricality, the over-amped machismo. Fuck this “sport” and fuck me for being gullible enough to believe I might have an okay time with this low-rent, on-the-nose, over-pumped waste of time.
Bodies dropping to the canvas, guys screaming in pain, the exaggeration of anguish.
I hate wrestling culture even more than bowling culture (Kingpin) and NASCAR culture (TalladegaNights) and that’s saying something.
It took me less than ten minutes to decide I didn’t give a damn about the Von Erichfamily and their ludicrous blue-collar braggadocio and strange penchant for self-destruction and tragedy — Kevin (Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), Papa Fritz (Holt McCallany), Mama Doris (Maura Tierney), Pam Adkisson (Lily James) and Mike (Stanley Simons).
Which HE commenters urged me to see this fucking film? As they brought pain into my life, I will bring some kind of pain into theirs. It’s only fair.
Three dead brothers embracing at lakeside…
TheIronClaw has another half-hour to go. I feel obliged to stick it out but God, this is awful.
Lily Gladstone’s Mollie Burkhart is a supporting character — this was clear after Killers of the Flower Moon’s Cannes premiere last May.
Mollie sidesteps traditional definings of lead character behavior at every turn — basically being a passive victim who doesn’t react to murders of family members and the attempted methodical murder of herself except with sullen silences, and who spends half the film in bed as she slowly dies from poisoning.
It’s an under-energized (i.e., dull) performance sans tempest and catharsis.
Gladstone’s Best Actress campaign is first and foremost an identity bandwagon and, not to sound overly harsh, a case of unmitigatedcategoryfraud if there ever was one.
But the woke identity celebrationists see this as an historic opportunity to shower Gladstone with love and largesse and thereby symbolically cleanse themselves of any sort of association or guilt over white Hollywood’s decades of mistreatment or mischaracterizing of Native American culture (as echoed by Marlon Brando during the ‘73 Oscar telecast and the subsequent slagging of the late Sacheen Littlefeather, or something like that).
“The one inarguable thing you’ve said [about] Gladstone is that Mollie is too passive and shoved to the background to be a leading role.” — HE’s own Kristi Coulter.
Pure narrative, pure cultural politics — zero to do with quality of performance.
You can stand me up before the gates of hell, and I won’t back down on this.
I don’t get the alleged “Disney presents Clockwork Orange slash Hunger Games” aesthetic in this just-released White House Christmas video. But it’s fairly clear what the Bidens are saying in posting this.
The last time I checked the U.S. of A. was still a vast melting pot — 95% straight, 59% European descended, 18% Latino, 13.5% African American, 12% Hispanic, 6% Asian, etc. But you’d never know it from this Biden Christmas video, which basically thumbs its nose at mainstream American culture outside the blue urban pockets.
Joe and Jill Biden to rubes: “Our base is mostly, or at least politically speaking, a partly straight but generally Black gay lesbian tutti-fruity tap dancing Glee club…clackety-clack at the White House…none of that Hugh Jackman or Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire-type stuff…this is how we see happy America.”
Translation: We believe in the non-white, non-straight urban vote. White schlubbo bumblefucks can do what they want or vote how they want, but this is who we are.
…because some of her texts on the Israeli-Hamas conflict have impliedananti–Semiticbias, or so some have judged. And so the In TheHeights costar has been jettisoned from the next Scream movie.
It’s fair to observe, I think, that there’s an apparent racial-ethnic factor affecting reactions to the Israeli-Hamas war.
If you’re a fair-skinned American or European Jew (fully or partly), you’re naturally going to feel an allegiance with Israel. If you’re from a culture of color that has experienced white avarice or white colonialism or white racism (Barrera is Mexican), you’re going to identify or sympathize with the Palestinian viewpoint.
There appears to be no way for an entertainment industry person to express limited support or at least compassion for presumably innocent Gaza Palestinians caught in the crossfire without taking a careerhit.
You can’t say, for example, that “the 10.7 Hamas atrocity was satanic and that the responsible Hamas fiends must sufferthenecessaryconsequences, but many thousands of non-combatant Gaza residents have since died from Israeli reprisals and many more thousands of non-combatants will die in the coming weeks, and thattooistragic.”
Apparently you can’t blurt this out without being regarded askance or getting dropped or cancelled.
This is what Barrera recently said:
But in other texts she implied what sounded to some like aformofracialbias — feelings and convictions in support of Gaza victims but also against Israel’s “white” government and its defensive (or suppressive) military policies
However unwise from a careerist perspective, what Barrera has said seems fairly close to what Barack Obama said on 11.5, Here’s a portion:
Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction (Amazon MGM, 12.15) is a brilliant, perceptive, dryly amusing adult chuckler. Not a “comedy” but a heh-heh-funny kinda thing. I adored the low-keyness of it, and was delighted, of course, by the focus upon the general insanity of white wokeness — the off-the-charts fetishizing of black culture by guilty (wealthy, well-educated) white liberals. So I felt like a pig in shit.
And yet the source novel, Percival Everett‘s “Erasure,” was published 22 years ago, and therefore couldn’t have addressed the woke lunacy of the last five or six years. But Jefferson’s screenplay brings things right up to date. And having seen it this morning, I certainly understand the popularity of the film, starting with the Toronto Film festival debut (9.8.23); ditto those who voted to give it the People’s Choice Award.
Alas, I liked the first 45 or 50 minutes more than the remaining 60 or 65. (The total running time is 117 minutes.) I didn’t find the second section crushing or devasating or anything in that realm, but my hopes had been raised to such a degree…let me try again.
Here’s how I put it to a friend an hour ago: I was IN LOVE with American Fiction for the first 45 or 50 minutes. I adored the scathing criticism of idiotic white people falling all over themselves to praise black grit. I was definitely amused and charmed by it, and was positively swooning over Jeffrey Wright’s lead performance, and I really liked Sterling K. Brown‘s gay brother and pretty much the enire supporting cast (Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Leslie Uggams).
And then a certain mock-literary hustle takes off and becomes a big success, and bit by bit and piece by piece the film starts to soften. The tension begins to dissipate. At times it even flails around. Less focused, less hardcore.
Please don’t think I disliked the second half because it does work here and there, but the back end doesn’t compare with that first 45 or 50. I thought the film might build into something angrier, more cynical, ballsier, franker.
It’s finally, to my mild disappointment, not much more than a smart social satire. Which is fine in itself but for a while I was yearning for so much more.
I thought Jefferson might go for broke and dive deeper, but he didn’t.
Friendo: “As finely crafted as the movie is, part of the reason I loved the first 45 minutes is the intense hope one has that American Fiction is going to be the scandalous, balls-out satire of white wokeness that we so desperately need (and by a black filmmaker!). And though it certainly nods in that direction, that’s not the film it turns out to be. I would call that a seriously blown opportunity.
“I agree that it’s a very solid and humane movie. But given the limitation we’re talking about, it’s being madly overhyped as an Oscar competitor. Clayton Davis and Scott Feinberg think it’s going to win Best Picture!”
Friendo #2 who’s read “Erasure”: “Everett’s book is harder than the film. [Jeffrey Wright]’s sister is murdered by an abortion protester, and the father may have sired another child with a white woman, etc.
“The movie stuff isn’t in the book but the book has a lot of meta, text-within-a-text stuff so I can understand why Jefferson wanted to transpose those effects into the adaptation.
“The book within the book parodies Richard WrIght and of course ‘Ellison’ is meant to evoke Ralph. There is some Ishmael Reed in the mix too. Everett himself teaches college so I’m sure he has had to endure the same sort of thing hat [Wright’s character] does in the opening scene.
“Wright’s romance with Erika Alexander isn’t in the book either. Everett is an executive producer so I presume he signed off on the changes. And I’m sure he knows no one is in a hurry to adapt ‘The Trees.'”
…and out of 39 film reviews she’s written for Vox over the last several weeks, my basic impressions are that (a) she’s smart and writes well, (b) she leans toward circumspect analysis rather than yea-nay verdicts, and (c) that she seems to be generally obliging.
I certainly wouldn’t say that Wilkinson is looking to preemptively strike blows or tear down, not if she can avoid it. She’d rather analyze, understand and reflect upon.
I haven’t read all 39 Wilkinson reviews top to bottom, but so far it appears that she’s panned only one — The Exorcist: Believer, which everyone trashed.
I hated Janet Planet and yet Wilkinson kinda loved it…uh-oh. And she found Fingernails, which I couldn’t stand and in fact walked out of, “funny and ultimately heartwrenching”…yikes!
Wilkinson just turned 40 — born on 11.4.83 — and is therefore an elderly Millennial. Is it therefore fair to presume that she’s a bit of a wokey? No, it’s not fair to presume that, certainly based on my limited knowledge of her work. But she almost certainly is to some extent or the Times wouldn’t have hired her.
I know that just shy of seven years ago Wilkinson was totally floored by Get Out so she and Bob Strauss are automatic besties in this regard. Wilkinson’s review made no mention of Ira Levin‘s The Stepford Wives, and in my book that’s a seriousthingtoomit.
Here’s her final paragraph: “I’m white, and have no idea what it’s like to be a black American, and I never really can understand it instinctively, no matter how much I try to empathize. But my female body thrilled sickeningly with recognition when I saw Rosemary’s Baby, and I felt an echo of that same sensation watching Get Out. Which makes me wonder if — just maybe — a great, funny, well-made horror movie like Get Out can, while not totally bridging the gap between my experience and someone else’s, at least help us understand each other a little better.”
My friend was mostly enraged by the “may” qualification apparently. Sasha and I have long agreed about many, many things, but not about The Beast. When she mentions him I usually just sidestep or change the subject. Yesterday, however, was a breakthrough moment when she acknowledged that he’s a sociopath.
I don’t dictate opinions to Sasha, I replied. I can only say what I think, which generally falls in the realm of sensible center-left territory. I thought it was a significant thing, however, when Sasha allowed that Trump is a sociopath, which she’s never admitted to before. The next step is admitting that he’s basically a crime-family felon — an authoritarian, uncivilized, intolerant, anti-Democratic ruffian.
She added the “and Democrats are worse” part to the intro copy. I’ve never tried to instruct Sasha about what to think or write. It’s not my style. Anyway…
“Sasha was a progressive pro-Hillary lefty before the pandemic,” I explained. “And it’s fair to say, I think, that not all right-of-the-spectrum types are necessarily evil. Position-wise and sensibility-wise Sasha isn’t all that different than Bill Maher or Dave Chappelle. Recently the pro-Israel Sasha has also express disgust about some of the more adamant pro-Hamas sentiments on the left, but who isn’t on that page?
“And you know what else? She hates it when Hollywood wokesters gang up and vote to purge and destroy iconoclasts like me, and for the last few years she’s long been an excellent friend and devoted ally in this regard.
“All in all I’m guilty of nothing worse than being an alleged ‘asshole’ of sorts…of venting opinions that the Stalinists don’t approve of…being a nervy, big-mouthed devotee of a certain late 20th Century and early 21st Century liberal aesthetic, and of being devoted to hundreds upon hundreds of great films. But there’s a whole Millennial-Zoomer gender-pronoun sector out there that wants me shunned and dismembered because they want anyone who doesn’t parrot basic woke-think doctrine…not that bad if you don’t listen to guys with H.R. GeigerAlien acid in their bloodstream like Glenn Kenny.
“Part of this animus, I’m imagining, is due to my admiration of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski.
“You should try being un-person-ed by the woke crazies and go-along cowards. It’ll have an effect upon your thinking, trust me.
Just after the Toronto Film Festival a journo colleague told me I’d like American Fiction (Amazon/MGM, 12.15). Now I understand what he meant. It’s Tootsie by way of Black identity and psychotic white woke-itude.
It is Louis CK's opinion that Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut "doesn't touch earth...it takes place in an incredibly high-up, thin-oxygen world...it's not about anyone that anyone [in the audience] knows,,,the movie has this plodding tone and plodding pace, which is what [Kubrick] does here.,..if he was a comic book artist, people would say 'this is how the guy draws.' Kubrick was a masterful filmmaker, and [when I watch Eyes Wide Shut] I just say 'this is where he was at, and what his fucked-up brain was making.'"
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