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Most Under-45s Have Never Seen This
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[Posted on 3.11.16] Tucker Carlson asking Col. Douglas Macgregor how the United States can get out of the Iran war:
“Somebody will say, why do you end it? Because if we don’t, we’re going to hit $300 per barrel of oil. We’re going to watch 60 to 80% of stock values crash. People are going to lose trillions in wealth.
“It will be a disaster, and it’s not something we’ll recover from.”
“We’ve thrown all caution to the wind. Think of any number of worst-case scenarios; they’re all on the horizon.”
“President Trump is still president of the United States, not president of Israel.”
“He has to think about the consequences here at home for us for the average man…not for the billionaire class, and not the Epstein class.”
The great Bette Davis enjoyed a ten-year career peak between 1934 and 1944, half driven by her brittle, hard-edged, ache-in-the-heart element opposite strong male costars, and the second half largely propelled by her women-centric tragedies.
Among the highlights of Davis’s glory period: Of Human Bondage (’34), The Petrified Forest (’36), Marked Woman (’37), Jezebel (’38), Dark Victory (’39), Juarez (’39), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (’39), All This, and Heaven Too (’40), The Bride Canme COD (’40), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), The Man Who Came to Dinner (’41), Now, Voyager (’42), Old Acquaintance (’43) and Watch on the Rhine (’43).
Davis bounced back, of course, with All About Eve in 1950, and then bounced back a second time with her classic hag-horror performance in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (’62, filmed when she was only 53 or 54).
In February ’43 Davis spoke to The New Yorker‘s Janet Flanner in order to promote her Oscar-nominated performance in Now Voyager. Flanner (1892-1978) was a brilliant writer. Her sentences and phrases (“atavistically suspicious of happy endings”) were perfect in a lean, pared-to-the-bone, thoroughly thought-through way.
Flanner: “As far as she has been permitted, Bette Davis has molded her film career on her motto, ‘I love tragedy.’
“Until Pearl Harbor she was the American favorite of the Japanese moviegoers because, they said, she represented the admirable principle of sad self-sacrifice. An adult-minded New Englander, atavistically suspicious of happy endings, she was so convinced by her early Hollywood parts that a floppy feminine hat was a symbol of celluloid sappiness that she later had written into her contract a clause permitting her to refuse to carry a hat in her hand like a damned basket of rosebuds.
“Becoming a big star often addles a human being, usually in one of three ways; the victim becomes a superior, lonely ego and stays home, or becomes a public character and goes out constantly, or becomes glamorous, no matter where he or she happens to be.
“Miss Davis was glamorous, years ago, for about a month. This period ended when, backed up by a smart town car containing a white poodle and livened chauffeur, and attired in moody black velvet slacks and jacket, she met her mother, who had been on a trip East, at the Los Angeles railway station. Mrs. Davis was unable to believe her own eyes and flatly said so. The glamour was dropped later that day.
“It is her notably large eyes, disliked at first by both Hollywood and herself, which finally accelerated her ascent in pictures. When Hollywood at last got around to making analyses, it discovered that eighty per cent of screen acting is concentrated in the eyes. In Dark Victory Miss Davis made it one hundred per cent.
“Since her role was that of a woman threatened with insanity, her director wanted her to indicate her disorder by crazed motions of the hands. She decided to use only her eyes. Even the quantity of her erotic appeal, which so worried the studios at the beginning, has been recomputed. When, twelve years ago, a producer said she had no more sex appeal than Slim Summerville, she said he went too far. Now producers go even farther; they say she is solid, ice-cold, Puritan sex, of the type against which the Sunday blue laws had to be passed.
“If you ask the Hollywood trade who is the best actress in the business right now, the unanimous, indeed the only fashionable, answer is Davis. The trade adds, sotto voce, that her box-office is enormous because men fans are convinced that she is feminine, though she is really only maternal.
“On a recent War Bond selling tour in the Ozarks and other rural districts, Miss Davis made the perturbing discovery that she scared lots of simple Americans of both sexes. This in turn alarmed her. Some metropolitan theatre critics claim that she seems complex in her roles because she herself is an unresolved character.
“On the other hand, émigrés from Europe feel that she should be the dominant member of a great national stock company, like France’s Comédie-Française, rather than be allowed to beat out her talent and wings in the movies.
“Her own idea of an ideal program would be, as she puts it, ‘to play one good play a winter on Broadway and then photograph it that summer in Hollywood.’ She will probably always think of the stage when she thinks of a good play, and to her the cinema will undoubtedly remain something done with improved lantern slides. ‘A movie,’ she once said, ‘is not even a dress rehearsal.'”
[20:51 mark] Perri Nemiroff: “Yeah, I’m sorry…I’m just focused right now on the people who are being queggered in the comments” — “queggered”? What does queggered mean? Is she saying quaker-ed? Or quavered? None of these terms make any sense.
Nemiroff: “I’m happy to put them into time out [mode]. We don’t need to….ahhh…we don’t need to disrespect anyone in order to make our opinion known. Some of you are well aware of this and yet you continue to do it, and [you should know] it’s very easy to ban you from these conversations ’cause we pride ourselves on, yes, having different opinions about award season topics but also treating each other with respect….it’s not that hard.”
During the last act of Dune: Part Three (Warner Bros. 12.6), Timothée Chalamet‘s Paul Atreides runs around with a tennis-ball haircut. Which, of course, makes him look much less attractive. It makes him look vaguely wacko or criminal even.
Why did Timmy lose his longish hair? Because director Denis Villeneuve wanted him to look 15 or 20 years older — a totally deranged decision. But that’s Villeneuve for you. A dweeby oddball who simply doesn’t get the sexy-movie-star thing. A blockage.
It doesn’t take a genius mentality to understand that fans of this or that movie star want their idols to look good in a flush, sexy, full-head-of-hair way. Tennis-ball Chalamet looks like a right-wing Aryan psycho from rural Idaho, and yet Villeneuve wanted Chalamet to look like this….he wanted Chalamet to look like an effing East Los Angeles gang-banger.
Imagine if Howard Hawks had insisted that Cary Grant wear a tennis-ball cut for Only Angels Have Wings, or if Alfred Hitchcock had insisted on tennis-balling Grant for his lead role in North by Northwest. If they had done so Hawks and Hitch would have been fired. Hell, blackballed.
Tennis-balled John Wayne in Red River. Tennis-balled Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Tennis-balled Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. Tennis-balled George Clooney in Michael Clayton.
“Last summer fans of the once curly-haired actor were shocked to see him out and about with what appeared to be a buzz cut that was confirmed in October. Turns out, he was just as surprised as everyone else.
“During a Dec. 12 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, the Oscar nominee, 29, said that his hair transformation, done on June 25 for his role in Dune: Part 3, started with what’s called a ‘3 millimeter hair cut.’ Then director Denis Villeneuve kept asking the star to go shorter and shorter with his hair.”
HE reaction: Because in terms of understanding the value of traditional movie-star glamour vibes, Villeneuve is a clueless clod.
People: “At the suggestion of a 1 millimeter chop, Chalamet said he practically ‘begged’ to have his hair kept longer. “You know, your hair…weirdly we’re all attached [to our hair]…it’s kind of like our personalities, these follicles that grow out of our heads”.
But his locks were “stolen.”
“It’s supposed to be a nice character shift, and I’m playing 15, 20 years older,” Timothee explained.
In my mind, David Zaslav was never a WB exec who was propelled by dreams, visions, soul and spirit. He was a bottom-line bean counter who made the Hollywood realm into a stingy, smaller place. Plus he lives in BobEvans ‘ French chateau home on Woodland, which I visited several times in the ‘90s. Now, there was a studio chief and producer with a semblance of blood ins his veins.
Glenn Kenny informs that Zaslav’s compensation is $551 million in cash and $330 million in tax reimbursement.
From hell’s heart I stab at thee…for hate’s sake I spit at thee…seriously. There’s something mean and spiteful inside you. If you can’t recognize and acknowledge serious artistry, what good are you?
I said this seven years ago, and here goes again: By the standards of big-time celebrity flackery, hotshot publicist Peggy Siegal did absolutely nothing wrong by working for and with Jeffrey Epstein during the aughts and teens. Shade, yes, but guilty of nothing at all. The game is the game.
Siegal was extensively quoted in a 3.5 New York interview piece. Same old same old. A seasoned pro, she fraternized and exchanged favors with a bad guy, agreed, but she had nothing to do with Epstein’s predations. Zip. Let it go.
I’ve done no reporting on the relationship between veteran hotshot publicist Peggy Siegal and odious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. I therefore have no argument with that 7.19 Hollywood Reporter piece, written by Gary Baum and Scott Feinberg, that basically asserts that Siegal used poor judgment in having had certain dealings with Epstein in a professional capacity.
If I had been in Peggy’s shoes I would have certainly kept my distance after Epstein served his sweetheart Florida sentence, but she’s not a demon for adopting what boiled down to a look-the-other-way attitude. Remember that people in p.r. are always attracted to and dealing with people in possession of great wealth and powerful connections. It goes with the territory.
It’s also a common fact that big-time publicists sometimes rub shoulders with possibly shady fellows in this or that respect. It happens; it’s fairly common.
Where, for example, was the Hollywood Reporter article that besmirched the reps of Weinstein Co. employees who knew or strongly suspected what Harvey was up to, sexual manipulation and assault-wise, but said and did nothing? It’s very easy to point fingers in hindsight.
Earlier today legendary director-screenwriter Paul Schrader weighed in on the Siegal-Epstein thing:
If there’s one serving of advice I have consistently rejected and in fact despised all my life, it’s “invest in love rather than disdain,” “glass half full rather than half-empty,” “always look on the bright side,” etc.
Do you think Mark Twain or George Orwell or Paul Morrissey ever bought into that happy-faced crap?
I’ve always looked at things as they are or seem to be, and free of vibes of forced smiley-face happiness or rose-colored glasses or any of that jazz. Life is not Disneyland.
HE commenter Zoey Rose: “Seriously Jeff, look for the things you enjoy [and] not the things you hate. Time on this planet is winding down so why not find pleasures in life instead of being the epitome of the cliched old fart complaining about kids,” blah blah.
HE to Zoey Rose: “Speak for yourself regarding the ‘winding down’ of time. Nothing’s winding down on this end, I can tell you. And what do you know of the future, by the way? About as much as anyone else does, which isn’t much except for generalities.”
As much as I strongly suspect that Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, will soon be blown into meaty shards, I think it’s cruel and seriously cheap of the White House Trumpies to howl with laughter over allegedly reliable intelligence that Khameinei may be into “chowing down“, so to speak.
So what if he’s gay? Khameinei’s closeted sexuality, if verified, has nothing to do with whether or not he deserves to die, or whether he will, in fact, be taken out by Israeli missiles.
I’ll admit that I’m wondering myself if Kahmeini is a top or a bottom (one presumes that the leader of a country would be a top).
The N.Y. Post‘s Steven Nelson is reporting that President Trump “couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.
“Others in the room also found it ‘hilarious’ and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official ‘has not stopped laughing about it for days,’ said one person familiar with the briefing.”
You know the N.Y. Times won’t touch this possibly valid intel with a 20-foot pole.
Okay, what’s done is done. I punched my refrigerator three or four times after Michael B. Jordan stole the Best Actor Oscar from the much more deserving Timothee Chalamet, but I’ve let it all go. The man won and that’s that. Move on.
Who was the last major award-winner to drop by a fast-food joint after the Oscar ceremony?
After winning Best Actress for her Million Dollar Baby performance, Hillary Swank famously visited Astro Burger (which I’ve always called Mojo Burger in my head) at 7475 Santa Monica Blvd.
How many times have I visited In-N-Out Burger at 7009 Sunset Blvd. (corner of Orange, three or four blocks east of La Brea). Maybe not even twice. It’s too brightly lit, too many commoners.
HE-posted at 8:20 pm eastern: “Anyway, it’s over. One Battle After Another taking the inaugural Best Casting Oscar plus Sean Penn beating Lindo and Sarsgard in supporting means Sinners isn’t winning Best Picture. Yes! Yes! It’ll be OBAA.”
Bill McCuddy says the Oscar producers will never again make the mistake of announcing the winner of the Best Casting Oscar at a little past the one-hour mark. Because it’s a bellwether award…a likely forecast of things to come. Henceforth no one will know which film has won the casting Oscar until at least the two-hour mark, or perhaps even at two-and-a-half.
Feinberg, in short, agrees with HE’s long-running condemnation or degradation of Sinners as a schlocky Samuel Z Arkoff vampire film. That’s what he’s saying by using the term “zombies-centric.” No one with any kind of faith or passing belief in transcendent cinema would or should have voted for a blood-soaked, cunnilingus-friendly drive-in film…’nuff said.
10:50 pm: Sinners got the most nominations ever (16) and suffered the most losses ever (12).
Friendo: “I also have to ask what genius thought it was a good idea to have Bill Pullman and his nepo baby kid to present an Oscar? They weren’t funny and had no chemistry. People are still pushing Lewis Pullman like he’s some great actor. He’s bland.”
10:35 pm: One Battle After Another defeats Sinners for the Best Picture Oscar. Jordan’s win aside, the so-called Sinners surge didn’t amount to much, did it? The Oscar telecast ran for three hours and 38 minutes.
10:32 pm: Jessie Buckley deservedly wins Best Actress for her Hamnet performance. What more is there to say at this stage? Buckley seemed surprised…shocked…taken aback. Why I can’t imagine. Good for her. The Oscar was hers because of the last seven minutes of Hamnet…plain and simple.
10:20 pm: Don’t stab me in the heart by giving the Best Actor Oscar to Michael B. Jordan for playing Smoke and Stack! Don’t do it…aaaarrrgghhh! This is sooo effing painful. My personal anguish aside, this is a totally laughable, bone-headed call. The fucking SAG members are to blame, and particularly the female contingent. Timothee Chalamet and Ethan Hawke delivered the real goods…you know this. But women didn’t approve of the sociopathic Marty Supreme character and so Jordan won. I’m very upset about this. It’s just fucking wrong. A bullshit call.
10:16 pm: Paul Thomas Anderson wins Best Director Oscar for One Battle After Another….no surprise, good job. HE approves on a craft level.
10:10 pm: “Golden”, the KPop Demon Hunters song, has won Best Original Song Oscar. Sinners loses. The “Golden” team is played off.
10:03 pm: HE is hoping that Sentimental Value will win Best International Feature, and it’s won! Hallelujah! Director/co-writer Joachim Trier, paraphrasing James Baldwin: “All adults are responsible for all children, and let’s not vote for anyone who doesn’t take this principle seriously.”
10 pm: Sinners will probably win the Best Original Song Oscar…no? The show is now three hours old. But first Javier Bardem says “no to war, and free Palestine.”
9:47 pm: One Battle After Another wins for Best Editing. And here comes the Oscar for Best Cinematography…good God, the winner is Sinners, the one film that you couldn’t even see half of! Basically a woo-woo gender-identity award won by Autumn Durald Arkapaw. Rod Lurie and Kyra are undoubtedly cheering and hopping around. This is a bit like The Hurt Locker‘s Kathryn Bigelow winning the Best Director Oscar back in 2011. I strongly disgaree, but fine. Friendo: “Sinners winning Best Cinematography over Train Dreams is a fucking joke.”
9:31 pm: As expected, Ludwig Goransson and Sinners win for Best Score. The Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound goes to…hey, give an Oscar to F1! They got it! F1 takes one home!
9:17 pm: The Best Documentary Short Film Oscar goes to All The Empty Rooms. The Best Documentary Feature goes to Mr. Nobody Against Putin…yes! Very moving acceptance speeches.
9:05 pm: Best Production Design Oscar goes to GDT’s Frankenstein, and the Best Visual Effects Oscar goes to Avatar: Fire and Water. Sinners loses in both categories, although it will probably win for Best Score and Best Song.
9:02 pm: Confirmed….Delroy Lindo didn’t clap for Sean Penn.
8:46 pm: Death meditations, recollections. Billy Crystal‘s solo tribute to poor Rob and Michelle Reiner is very, very moving. Ditto Rachel McAdams‘ for Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton. Plus Robert Duvall, Val Kilmer, Robert Redford. All of them.
8:31 pm: Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar goes to Paul Thomas Anderson and One Battle After Another. Expected. Then again he did advance the idea of Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw being willing to murder his biological daughter in order to qualify for membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club…a ridiculous narrative conceit. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is expected to win for Best Original Screenplay. Yup…he’s got that. Coogler is a likable dude. He speaks from the heart, and right off the top of his head.
8:20 pm: Kieran Culkin announcing Best Supporting Actor winner. Rooting against likely reality for Stellan Skarsgard to win. But Sean Penn wins, of course. And Penn isn’t there to accept! Anyway, it’s over…casting plus Penn means Sinners isn’t winning Best Picture. Yes! Yes! It’ll be OBAA. A friend says Delroy Lindo didn’t clap for Penn. True?
8:15 pm: A tie for Best Live Action Short. One is for “The Singers. The other is for “Two People Exchanging Saliva.” Kumail Najiani: “Ironic that the longest segment of the show is about the winners of Best Live Action Short.”
8:05 pm: Two first-rate Burger King commercials….”wefiredtheking.” The first one was easily the better/best.
8:02 pm: The first-ever Oscar for Best Casting goes to Kassandra Kulukundis (sp?) for One Battle After Another. Sinners loses again!
7:51 pm: Frankenstein winning for Best Costume Design = no win for Sinners in this category! I’m sorry but this is encouraging! And Frankenstein wins for Best Makeup!
7:48 pm: Ventura Crossroads parody commercial (making all aspect ratios tall and thin) made me laugh out loud. Loved it!
7:43 pm: The big Sinners musical dance number was a total knockout wowser….wonderfully sung, beautifully lighted, excellent choreography….grade-A top to bottom.
7:38 pm: Jett and Cait are both predicting that Michael B. Jordan will take the Best Actor Oscar. HE response: Jordan defeating Timothee Chalamet or Ethan Hawke is a ludicrous notion.
7:31 pm: Sutton’s favorite film, KPop Demon Hunters, wins Best Animated Feature. I feel nothing personally, but good for Sutton and all her KPOP friendos. I don’t care about the animated short subject winner. Nobody does. Okay, that’s mean.
7:18 pm: Amy Madigan has to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar…right? Yes!! Weapons! Love the expression on hubby Ed Harris‘s face….”what have I been tellin’ ya, girl?”
7:06 pm: Conan O’Brien‘s Weapons opener (chased by angry kids through the sets of all the Best Picture nominees)….fantastic! Great Ted Sarandos joke…”it’s his first time in a theatre!” Great Timothee Chalamet dig at the ballet & opera thing. “Too real for ya, hah?” Leonardo DiCaprio‘s moustache is his look for a new, currently rolling Martin Scorsese film (costarring Jennifer Lawrence).
6:40 pm: I’m sorry but Timothee Chalamet‘s all-white, peak-lapel tux is atrocious. I will defend TC’s right to speak hard truths about opera and ballet all he wants, but he deserves serious pushback for the tux.
6:40 pm: Too many actress nominees (Rose Byrne, etc.) are wearing their hair in tight buns. HE is especially disappointed that Sentimental Value‘s Renate Reinsve is bunning it. Kate Hudson and Nicole Kidman‘s hair is not bunned, and they look really great.
6:25 pm: Probably the most inspiring halftime speech ever given by any actor in any sports film, bar none…a speech that makes my eyes dampen each and every time: “We can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back….into the light…we can climb outta hell.”
Red carpet [6:10 pm]: I love how the tech crew supporting the ABC red carpet interviewers can’t manage to post the names of not-famous-enough celebs being spoken to. (Pick it up, fellas!) The gown worn by Hamnet‘s Jessie Buckley (deep red sash, pink-beige dress) doesn’t make it…not really. Plus she’s cut her hair too short — should have let it grow out a bit.
Sinners‘ Wunmi Mosaku, whose supporting performance I had totally forgotten before she was nominated, is hugely pregnant and dressed in an intense green gown. She’s not winning so forget it. Melissa McCarthy looks great…transformed by Ozempic! Spike Lee‘s white-beige cuffed pants look awful…way too much ankle-sock.
