Vice-President Dick Cheney having shot a guy he was hunting with isn’t funny. The victim, a 78 year-old lawyer named Harry Whittington, could have been seriously hurt and thank fortune he’s in stable condition, etc.
What is funny to me is that New York Times report that said Cheney “fired his shotgun without realizing that Mr. Whittington had approached him from behind, spraying his fellow hunter on his right side, on his cheek, neck and chest.”
Fulldisclosure: I once mistakenly shot one of my own guys with a paintball during a war game I took part in north of Los Angeles, so I know how Cheney might feel. But at least I didn’t tag the guy in the neck and face.
Posted on 10.3.18:
Christian Bale‘s Dick Cheney voice is very close to the Real McCoy‘s. Not to mention that unhurried way of speaking and that look of settled, laid-back corruption in his eyes. Plus the bulky appearance (bloated bod, basketball-shaped head) and hairline. And of course the aging as the film moves along. That’s it — I’m a convert. The downside is that Adam McKay‘s Vice doesn’t open until Christmas, which probably means no press screenings until mid-November.
Director-screenwriter friend: “I know a couple people who’ve seen Vice, and they’re calling it the movie that Oliver Stone‘s W wanted to be. The only weak link is Steve Carell, who isn’t convincing as Donald Rumsfeld.” I told him I’d heard that Sam Rockwell‘s Dubya is more or less a cameo, two or three scenes. His reply: “Just like in the actual administration, Bush plays a small supporting role. While Bale fully inhabits Cheney like DeNiro did LaMotta in Raging Bull, Carell merely does an impression and shtick under conspicuous makeup.”
Until last night I had ducked Jack Clayton and Harold Pinter‘s The Pumpkin Eater (’64) for decades. I never even thought about giving it a whirl, mainly out of fear that it might smother me in dreary wifey nihilism and perhaps make me feel morose. (It’s based on a novel by Penelope Mortimer.)
But I finally gave in last night, and it’s actually quite exceptional — a sophisticated, finely wrought, moderate-mannered parlor drama about a gradually deteriorating London marriage.
Vaguely similar to David JonesBetrayal‘ (’83), which Pinter also wrote, of course, based on his 1980 play, The Pumpkin Eater has a wry, half-fleeting, matter-of-fact quality. But it also conveys genuine compassion for a woman who’s slowly perishing within.
It’s basically about Peter Finch‘s chilly screenwriter husband — an aloof, constantly disloyal hound who in his heart of hearts needs to be constantly worshipped and massaged and, I’m guessing, blown for good measure — quietly and relentlessly cheating on the poor, wounded, downhearted Anne Bancroft, who allows their many children to basically run their marriage.
This is going to sound shallow but I felt deflated by the fact that Bancroft’s hair is rather gray throughout — only in the very beginning are her locks dark and ravishing in the style of Mrs. Robinson, whom she would play two or three years later. It makes her look drained and faded. Bancroft was only 32 or 33 when the film was shot, and yet Clayton tries to make her look at least 47 or 48, if not older. But her performance is staggering, and it resulted in her second Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Costarring James Mason, Maggie Smith, Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Webb, Richard Johnson and Yootha Joyce. Oswald Morris‘s black-and-white cinematography is generally delicious; ditto Georges Delerue‘s score.
Pauline Kael: “Bancroft’s performance as the (compulsive childbearing) Englishwoman whose nerves are giving out has an unusual tentative, exploratory quality. (It ranks with her more straightforward acting in The Miracle Worker.)
“The Pumpkin Eater is a stunning, high-style film — fragmented yet flowing. The murky sexual tensions have a fascination, and there are memorable moments: Bancroft’s crackup in Harrods; glimpses of Mason being prurient and vindictive, and Maggie Smith being a troublemaking ‘other woman.'”
That’s correct — the first hit is Ladd’s Flo Castleberry, a world-weary, sharp-tongued waitress in Martin Scorsese‘s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More. The second hit is her performance as the doomed Ida Sessions in Roman Polanski‘s Chinatown.
Chinatown was released in the atmospheric heat of Watergate — 6.20.74. Alice opened almost exactly six months later — 12.9.74.
Paddy Chayefsky won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Marty (’55), but it wasn’t adapted from a book or a play or any non-cinematic source. The Delbert Mann-directed Marty was, line for line, Chayefsky’s own live-TV play — same dialogue, barely “adapted”. It was simply filmed on celluloid and slightly “opened up” with two or three exteriors rather than captured on live TV.
Initially posted on 6.2.14: “There’s one thing wrong with Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky‘s Marty, which won 1955’s Best Picture Oscar and launched the career of Ernest Borgnine after he took the Oscar for Best Actor. (Mann also won for Best Director; ditto Chayefsky for Best Adapted Screenplay.)
“The problem is that jaunty Marty theme song, which apparently wasn’t written by score composer Roy Webb but songwriter Harry Warren and arranger George Bassman. The brassy and fanfare-ish waltz is entirely out of synch with the simple, somewhat sad story of a lonely Bronx butcher and his loser friends and a girl he falls in love with.
“The purpose of the song was purely about marketing — the idea was to persuade audiences that Marty wouldn’t be too much of a downer. It succeeded in that goal but the music sure feels like a downer now.”
Jeff Goldblum is the only Wicked: ForGood cast member I personally relate to, and his character (the Wizard of Oz) is fairly villainous for the most part.
You can’t say Goldblum didn’t have the bestline in the original Wicked: “I think it’s a bit much.”
But never let it be said this is not a “safe”, positive-minded, wholesomely diverse cast. They cover the wokewaterfront.
What kind of 21st Century ensemble cast do I relate to? Dozens upon dozens. How about the Spotlight guys?The SentimentalValue family? Or the ZeroDarkThirty-ers? Or the ManchesterByThe Sea pain-bearers? Or the Weapons community? Or Team Irishman? I could go on and on.
Why does the title of Clint Bentley‘s Train Dreams (Netflix, 11.7) allude to 19th Century locomotives when it’s more of a “this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and hemlocks” thing?
It’s ostensibly about a logger (Joel Edgerton) cutting down huge trees to make way for a cross-continental railroad, but it’s seemingly a Terrence Malick-styled, Tree of Life-resembling meditation about the profound spiritual bounty of big-tree forests…something like that.
I’m certainly obliged to submit to Train Dreams (shot in 1.37!) when it begins streaming on 11.7.
I wouldn’t have gone for leg-lengthening surgery as the Ilizarov Apparatus wasn’t invented until 1949, which Hart, who died on 11.22.43 or exactly 20 years before JFK’s murder, obviously wasn’t around for.
Nor would I have gone to Prague for hair transplant surgery, as the results didn’t look good in Hart’s era. Things changed in 1984 with the introduction of mini-grafts and micro-grafts, which have incidentally enhanced HE’s life.
I would, however, have lobbied to be cast as the Mayor of Munchkin City in The Wizard of Oz. Just for a lark. No, I’m not being cruel or dismissive — if Victor Fleming had given Hart the role, his performance would have been applauded as a witty, urbane, self-accepting thing. Don’t hide from your biological shortcomings** — lean into them.
And I would have worn the same kind of elevator shoes, or “lifts”, that Humphrey Bogart wore in The Big Sleep. Oh, and I would have embraced sobriety.
“Although Hart wrote dozens of songs that are playful, funny and filled with clever wordplay, it is the rueful vulnerability beneath their surface that lends them a singular poignancy.” — Stephen Holden, N.Y. Times, 4.30.95.
** Lorenz Hart was five feet tall. Alan Ladd and James Cagney towered above him.
In Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe (’64), New York City gets nuked at the very end. In Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite (now streaming on Neflix), Chicago is in the nuclear crosshairs.
Fair question for those who’ve seen Lumet’s 61-year-old film: What would your reaction have been if there was no dramatization or depiction of the terrible nuclear climax? What if Lumet had decided to cut the last 8 to 10 minutes?
…and she still is. One of our greatest minds, hands down.
Paglia: “Women should model their persona on me, and on fellow Amazon feminists of the 1960s, which is that you are responsible for how people treat you.”
Stellan Skarsgard‘s flawed, charmingly neurotic, brazenly egoistic dad in Sentimental Value is likely to win.
Sean Penn‘s Lt. Col, Steven J. Lockjaw is a broad, stiff-backed caricature and not really a performance that yields any depth or sensitivity, but he’ll be nominated anyway because there’s a lot of lickspittle One Battle After Another kowtowing going on right now.
You know which OBAA player should be nominated in this category? Benicio del Toro‘s “Sensei”.
Paul Mescal‘s William Shakespeare in Hamnet will be nominated — I recognize this, no disputing.
Adam Sandler‘s Jay Kelly performance as a manager of a flaky big-name Hollywood actor deserves to be nominated, and he will be.
I sill haven’t seen Deliver Me From Nowhere, but it’s been obvious for several weeks that Jeremy Strong‘s performance as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau…it’s been obvious from the get-go that he’d be nominated.
In my head the planned Trump ballroom, to be built where the now-eradicated East Wing of the White House recently stood, is an architectural hall of pus and fascisthubris.
DonaldTrump is a temporary resident of a grand historical home that is owned by taxpayers. He didn’t have the right to mangle the traditional look of the place. He was obliged to respect the historical continuity aspect, and instead he said “fuck it, I’m going to Mar a Lago this place.”
In my mind the Trump ballroom is a spiritual kin of the giant Stay–PuftMarshmallowMan, whom we all remember from the totally unfunny third act of Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters.
Until the sudden bulldozing of the East Wing and the revealing of the ballroom’s architectural scheme, I had taken vague comfort in the notion of the Trump presidency being theoreticallyfinite and, you know, at least potentially a done deal (i.e., history) as of 1.20.29.
But the Stay-Puft ballroom will probably endure, and that likely fact has deeply enraged me. My blood is boiling.
If Gavin Newsom wins in ‘28, it must be torn the fuck down. I’m serious. Bulldoze the damn thing and rebuild a new East Wing, one that will presumably exude a semblance of taste, restraint and proper decorum.
And if Newsom won’t destroy it, the French75 should figure some way to dynamite it. This sounds crazy, I realize, but I would honestly not have a huge problem with LeonardoDiCaprio‘s Bob Ferguson using a drone to…I don’t know, drop a firebomb or something at 3:30 am.
The drawings/models of the older, classic White House vs. the Trump remodelling were copied from a 10.22.25 N.Y. Times story.
