Maybe if it was filmed in gorgeous Technicolor I might have somehow stuck with it? I love the subtle colors of Rome, especially around dusk. I only know that I’ve always found the concept of Audrey Hepburn’s princess living a restricted, regimented, hemmed-in life hard to swallow. Lame fairy-tale stuff.
April is bustin’ out all over:
“My God, there’s no end to it.” — Ned Beatty’s chubby salesman in Deliverance.
The last two episodes of season #2 of The Pitt really work. They feel amped, declarative, crescendo-ish. That baby really and truly saved Noah Wiley’s mega-stressed, chopper-riding Dr. Rabinovitch. He found the proverbial serene plateau. Did I ever believe that Robbie was actually mulling suicide? No, I never did. But I went along with the conceit.
Did I wind up feeling less hostile towards Dr. Trinity Santos because she was karaoke-singing Alanis Morissette at the very end? In a word, no. It was obviously good that Santos was venting all of the collected rage and stress, but I still think she’s bad news. Okay, I no longer think she should get hit by a car….I’ll give her that.
Jason Bateman (whose performances I’ve loved over the years) and David Harbour are fine, sturdy fellows in and of themselves.
But who in the realm of basic decency…who in the civilized world would want to watch a limited HBO miniseries that stems from these guys (i.e., a pair of midwestern characters they’re portraying) fucking each other? What in the name of holy hell and Jesus H. Christ? Poor Linda Cardellini! And with Peter Sarsgaard peripherally involved?
I wouldn’t want to contemplate, much less watch, a series about Harbour fucking anyone, under any circumstance. I want my gay relationship dramas or dark comedies to costar younger attractive actors…guys I’d consider if I was into cock.
“There’s no plan. AI is not Mr. Spock. It’s a bullshitting sycophant that is seducing everyone with flattery or threatening them with blackmail. And the people who run AI are, like, five guys.
“So just to be clear what we’re doing here…we’re letting a handful of hoodie-wearing, on-the-spectrum sociopaths…practically robots themselves…we’re letting these guys roll the dice on possible species extinction. And again, even these guys are afraid of what they’ve created.”
Associated Press, 4.13.26, 9:02 pm:
Jordan Ruimy to HE: “I need your five best films of the 1930s for a poll I’m doing.” Only five? You couldn’t at least have asked for ten? Too much elimination!
HE’s top five represent my strongest emotional bonds. Not my idea of the greatest, deepest, most artful vessels of that cinematic decade, but the films I simply like the most on a gut level.
1. Only Angels Have Wings
2. King Kong
3. The Wizard of Oz
4. The Informer
5. The Rules of the Game
The last 40 to 45 minutes of Part One of Gone With The Wind (shelling of Atlanta, evacuating of Atlanta, trip back to Tara, the radish scene) are really and truly GREAT. I’ve been saying this for years.
I don’t care what The Brink of War says — the world was not on the brink of war when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had their big 1986 summit in Reykavik, Iceland.
I was “there”, in a very real sense…I was walking around and reading newspapers and paying attention to NPR newscasts…and the vibe was nothing like the Cuban Missile Crists of October 1962.
J. K. Simmons‘s George Shultz, speaking to Reagan: “If we fail here, there will be war.” Don’t feed me that crap!
Secondly, Jeff Daniels is too heavy and jowly to play Reagan. He’s almost twice the size, width-wise, of the Real McCoy. He looks like Reagan might have looked if he’d gained 55 or 60 pounds. I’m not trying to be cruel here — I’m just reporting what eyes are telling me.
Angel Studios will begin distributing The Brink of War on 8.14.26.
…happened ten and a quarter years ago (1.25.16) and I was right in the middle of it, bruh….a front-row seat at Park City’s Eccles theatre…and I called it what it was, blunt and straight and true….”one of the biggest self-congratulatory circle jerks and politically correct wank-offs in the history of the Sundance Film Festival.”
This flashpoint event marked the birth of the cultish woke insanity that would begin to engulf Hollywood two years later and which ignited big-time during the COVID–infected, George Floyd summer of 2020.
One of the more significant responses to my 1.25.16 report came from Variety ‘s Steven Gaydos, who more or less implied that I was some kind of racist Unibomber who needed to face my own ugliness and get my head straight and so on.
2026 hindsight: Gaydos had his head up his woke-cheerleading glee club woo-woo rectum, and I was channeling the spirit of Dalton Trumbo.
When I was in my early to mid 20s I had a thing for “older women”…30somethings, early to mid 40somethings. I stuck to the same appetites when I reached my 30s. Brief episodic affairs with women of a certain age, etc. Moms, older librarian types, curvy women with gray-streaked hair.
Today’s 20something males are reportedly in a similar place.
In Matt Donnelly’s 4.16 Variety story about Michael B. Jordan‘s forthcoming The Thomas Crown Affair (Amazon, 3.5.27), a remake of a remake of Norman Jewison’s 1968 original, there’s a Jordan quote that suggests some kind of righteous, score-settling reparation angle may be a central element.
Besides directing, producing and starring as the slickly felonious lead character (i.e., more or less the same wealthy, sexy smoothie played by Steve McQueen in ’68 and Pierce Brosnan in John McTiernan’s 1999 refresh), Jordan is turning Crown into a social revenge agent — a thief who’s looking to correct or counter-balance historical crimes against people of color.
Thomas Crown, according to Donnelly, “wants to retrieve precious artifacts misappropriated, stolen from their rightful creators [and] sold over the centuries [by] the 1% monsters who buy and trade history and human lives.”
Jordan is referring, of course, to the usual demonic racist white-guy baddies, represented in this instance by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh’s shithead will either suffer a grievous financial loss or perhaps be murdered as payback for heinous crimes. Remember Jordan machine-gunning those overweight KKK crackers in Sinners? Same basic revenge deal, I’m presuming, in next year’s Crown.
“I didn’t want a reboot,” Jordan told Variety last November. “I wanted a reimagination. The first two films were about rich white guys stealing for fun. That doesn’t land today. Ours is more personal. The stakes are higher. [But our film’s] still got the fashion, romance.”
McQueen’s Crown was into the thrill of stealing and getting away with it, sure, but Jewison’s film presented him as a kind of romantic, super-rich, three-piece-suit-wearing Clyde Barrow, a quietly rebellious loner striking a symbolic blow against the establishment and straightlaced bourgeois values.
Considering the repeated emphasis on cunnilingus in Sinners and Faye Dunaway‘s notorious simulation of sex with chess pieces in the ’68 version, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Jordan and costar Adria Arjona (in the Dunaway role) will indulge in some kind of heated activity, symbolic or otherwise.
Focker-in-Law (Universal, 11.25.26) will obviously be serving that good old fuck-all Focker formula on a big silver platter with shrimp and salad on the side. Fat paychecks for all concerned.
The only difference is that the first Fockers flick (i.e., Meet The Parents) was 26 years ago, and the original cast members have since moved into the realm of grandparenting and beyond.
Thank God Arianna Grande is finally free of her Wicked obligations.
I have to be honest about Skyler Gisondo — he’s weird looking. I certainly wouldn’t want him to date, much less marry, my granddaughter.
…in the context of a film.
