On HBO’s Togetherness (the debut was eleven years ago) Amanda Peet‘s Tina fell into an awkward, in-and-out relationship with Alex, played by the bright but pudgy and obviously-inappropriate-by-classic-standards Steve Zissis.
Now, in Matthew Shear‘s Fantasy Life (Greenwich, 3.27.26), she settles into a relationship with another chubby Jewish intellectual type (played by Shear).
The older but still radiantly attractive Peet is now boxed in — she’ll almost certainly never be cast as a partner, wife or significant other of a slender, good-looking guy ever again.
But all the people cheering this coming scenario (myself included) must understand that as of 1.21.29 transies must leave minors alone, now and forever…and no more anti-white-male racism or feminist anti-male hostility (i.e., especially belittling young struggling, screen-obsessed males living in their parents’ basements), and no more accusing this or that person of racism in a screechy, hair-trigger manner, and no more ignoring the basic binary nature of gender and sexuality, and no more refusing to arrest hoodie-wearing shoplifters, and no more anti-common-sense woke crap in general…all of that excessive horseshit must come to an end.
Offer respect and you will get respect, and the nation may have a shot at decency and civility.
HE agrees with the headline and sub-head of GuyLodge’s Variety review…sight unseen, of course, but I can smell the coffee. Lodge may be a dweeb, but he’s a truly excellent wordsmith and is certainly no obsequious softballer.
Before today I’d never once seen even a portion of Elaine May‘s A New Leaf (Paramount, 3.11.71). But now I have. Two clips, to be exact.
It seems obvious that May’s deadpan black comedy was (and is) very well written as well as steadily, confidently paced (no hurry or worry), and that May and Walter Matthau had great, low-key fun as the two leads, and that Gayne Rescher‘s cinematography is most agreeably pro-level.
A 55th anniversary 4K restoration of A New Leaf will open at Manhattan’s IFC Center on Friday, 5.15.
It was well reviewed by all the top-dog critics (“The picture as it now stands is very funny indeed, but more charming than uproarious, and quite surprisingly romantic” — Molly Haskell), but Joe and Jane Popcorn weren’t in the mood or something.
“In what would become a hallmark for Elaine May, the film’s original $1.8 million budget shot up to over $4 million by the time it was completed. Shooting went 40 days over schedule, and editing took over ten months. Similar problems dogged her subsequent projects, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar.
“During shooting, producer Howard W. Koch tried to have May replaced, but she had put a $200,000 (equivalent to $1.6 million in 2025) penalty clause into her contract, and he was persuaded to keep her.
Alternate versions:
“After May would not show Paramount Pictures a rough cut of the film ten months into editing, Robert Evans took away the film from her and recut it, although she had the right to approve the final cut in her contract. May’s version was rumored to run 180 minutes; Evans shortened it to 102 minutes. Angered by the alterations, May tried to take her name off the film, and unsuccessfully sued Paramount to keep it from being released.
“The original story included a subplot in which Henry discovers from the household accounts that Henrietta is being blackmailed on dubious grounds by lawyer Andy McPherson (Jack Weston), and another character played by William Hickey. Henry poisons both of them. This darkly casts Henry’s eventual acceptance of a conventional life with Henrietta as his ‘sentence.'”
Or, as Luis Guzman said in TheLimey, “You could see the sea out there if you could see it.”
Matt Damon rules, and Anne Hathaway and CharlizeTheron sound like cool topliners, but what exactly is historically “sincere” about the casting of Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, RPatz, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom “SpiderMan” Holland, JohnLeguizamo, etc.?
I’d forgotten how politically anticipatory…how wonderfully diseased and wickedly pleasurable Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter‘s The Servant, which I haven’t watched since the aughts…I’d forgotten what a low-key gem it is.
I’d forgotten how dryly funny it is without announcing a humorous intent. It was commercially released a week before the JFK assassination but well before the social convulsions of the mid ’60s or any kind of “bawdy, explorational sexual promiscuity as revolutionary behavior” allusion or acknowledgment…a year or two before anyone was wearing even slightly longish hair…shot in the winter of ’63, when the Beatles hadn’t yet exploded (even in England) and well before the Dylan-goes-electric tremor or even a touch of that post-mods-vs.rockers, “things are getting sorta kinda trippy” London atmosphere in Antonioni‘s Blow-up…
None of that had kicked in, not really, and yet The Servant, oddly, seemed to have an inkling of what was just around the corner or, you know, coming down the pike in ’64 or ’65.
Wiki excerpt: “It was Losey who first showed Robin Maugham‘s novella, The Servant to Dirk Bogarde. Pinter stripped it of its first-person narrator, its yellow book snobbery, and the arguably antisemitic characterization of Barrett — oiliness, heavy lids — replacing them with an economical language that implied rather than stated the slippage of power relations away from Tony (James Fox) and towards Barrett (Bogarde).”
Reviews from irreverent, independent-minded buckaroos are the only ones you can fully trust. That said, initial reactions are mostly approving.
That tweeted suggestion that The Devil Wears Prada 2, arriving 20 years after the original…calling it The Devil Still Wears Prada would have been brilliant.
This is right at the top of my list of YouTube pleasure-watch scenes. I’m not a huge fan of Jeff Bridges‘ Deputy Dawg shitkicker accent, but this is probably the finest scene that Chris Pine will ever perform. Mainly for his silence, and for that guarded-meets-ironic facial expression, and how he lowers his rifle when his ex-wife and sons pull up.
Yes, I riffed about Hell or High Water a few weeks ago, but I didn’t post this particular clip.
David Cross‘s appearance — baseball cap, pot belly, bushy Santa Claus beard, shorts — is, for me, as much of a problem as Cross being casually, no-big-deal accepting of Brooklyn parents supporting 9-year-old trans kids.
I knew I was straight when I was three or four. I used to sleep with my pretty grandmother, and I distinctly recall getting a faint little charge outta that. I was leafing through nude girlie magazines when I was eight. I used to play doctor with a couple of neighborhood girls at the same age. But being an eight-year-old hetero horndog was entirely my idea. It fully came from within. The trans thing is different. It comes from the crowd. It’s half-imposed, half-trendy…a consensus thing.
Bill Maher: “Trans? Wait, [your daughter] has trans friends in third grade?”
Cross: “Yeah.”
Maher: “They know they’re trans in third grade?”
Cross: “I think a just-turned 9 year old…just the coolest kid.”
Maher: “[Is the child transitioning from] girl to boy?”
Cross: “Girl to boy. And she has another very close friend who’s not in the school, but who’s boy to girl at 3 years old.”
Maher: “A woman friend said, ‘I was what they called a tomboy. If I was alive now and acted the way I did then, this is what they would have done to me.’”
Cross: “Well, nobody’s ‘doing’ this to her.”
Maher: “Well, I don’t know.”
Cross: “Literally nobody is doing this to her.”
Maher: “How old?”
Cross: “Either 8 or, I think, 9.”
Maher: “Okay, then somebody is doing something because 8- or 9-year-olds can’t do anything on their own.”
Cross: “No, they’re buying them boys’ clothes.”
Maher: “Well then, they’re doing something.”
Cross: “Sure. Yes, you’re right. They’re buying them boys’ clothes.”
Maher: “And telling them you’re a boy now.”
Cross: “No, no, they’re not ‘telling’ them. They’re just agreeing with [the child].”
Maher: “Agreeing with an 8-year-old. Because when has their judgment ever been off at 8?”
Cross: “You knew you weren’t gay, right?… It’s not different.”
Maher: “It is different. Good luck with President Vance. Because, as I always say to my woke friends, we voted for the same person. You’re just why [Kamala Harris] lost, and this is a case of that.”
Cross: “Wait…what?”
Maher: “We voted for the same person. You’re just why she lost. Because America hears this, and they’re going to go, ‘Bill’s right…8-year-olds can’t really make decisions on their own like this.’ That’s what most people are going to say. This is why we’re going to vote for JD Vance…that’s America in a nutshell.”
People inclined to vote for JD Vance in ’28 aren’t in love with him. They know he’s a second-rate beardo. They felt the same way about Trump in ’24 and ’16. They know these guys are beasts in many respects. But they really, really hate wokeys, and that I understand.
