After re-reading yesterday’s thread about Kris Tapley‘s capsule reaction to Up In The Air, Actionman noted that “it’s a pity what HE has recently become…so many angry, bitter people with apparently zero sense of pure LOVE for film. Everyone ragging on everyone else, making cracks at how an actor or actress dresses or looks, how … Read more
I’ve said this before and here goes again, only I really mean it this time. Vague impressions to the contrary, Hollywood Elsewhere is not — and will henceforth not be permitted to be — a good hangin’ place for crude conservative wingnuts who also enjoy movies. I realize that my blunt and sometimes combative judgments … Read more
World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reports that Indiewire has taken down its comments section, as in permanently. “I’ve been keeping an eye out the last three or so weeks to see if the comments section would be re-installed,” Ruimy reports, “but it still hasn’t. I think [Indiewire owner Jay] Penske just nixed it. Older articles … Read more
HE to Trump-Tzu (joined HE 199 days ago, 852 comments): Something snapped yesterday. I’ve just had it, is all. I won’t provide a forum for a flaming Trumpster. Your posts are tedious, relentless. You’re not impolite but you lack finesse, and I’m just sick of reading your daily ideological spewings. And I loathe that image … Read more
Every couple of years Hollywood Elsewhere enforces a Stalinist purge of the most belligerent and infuriating right-wingers, who hang around this place like rats. The first big one was in ’08, and then another one happened in September ’09. I’m thinking about another purge today because of some truly appalling rightwing, NRA-supporting sentiments heard in … Read more
I’ve agreed to submit to a kind of monk-like withdrawal from the hurly burly for three days — Tuesday, 5.29 through Thursday, June 1. Never mind why. Suffice that while I’ve had the occasional sluggish day since HE went hourly-daily in April 2006, I’ve taken no days off during that time. So I’ll be mostly … Read more
Twice over the last two years I’ve felt it necessary to rid Hollywood Elsewhere of the loons — i.e., the intemperate thinkers and ignorance-spreading extremists. Honest debate is obviously vital and necessary, but people who deliberately spread gross untruths are being removed. Call it a reaction to the midterms and being enraged by mainstream media … Read more
Andrew Breitbart is starting his own conservative-minded Hollywood-oriented site — Big Hollywood — tomorrow, and he’s got Steve Mason as his box-office analyst,” a D.C.-based reader asked this morning. “Will you still quote Mason from time to time, or does this put him on your shit list?” “Of course not,” I replied. “Breitbart’s a good … Read more
I wangled a last-minute entry into a big hoo-hah for Warren Beatty‘s Reds (’81) at the Directors Guild of America theatre last night. It was a four-part affair — a buffet reception at 6 pm, screening at 7 pm, coffee, fruit and brownies in the lobby during intermission, and then a q & a with … Read more
Last night a friend wrote to complain about a line in the intro copy for the latest Oscar Poker podcast, to wit: “Sasha admits that Donald Trump MAY be a sociopath, but still thinks democrats are worse.” My friend was mostly enraged by the “may” qualification apparently. Sasha and I have long agreed about many, … Read more
[WARNING: HE regulars who routinely complain about political-minded or inside-the-Hollywood-beltway posts should just ignore this. It’s just an angry reply to an ex-friend that I wrote last weekend. Don’t worry about it.] A journalist I’ve known for a long, long time recently repeated an accusation that he’s hit me with before — that my blunt … Read more
Like everyone else, I thought the Armond White foot-shooting incident (the City Arts critic allegedly calling 12 years A Slave director Steve McQueen an “embarassing doorman” and a “garbageman” at a 1.6 New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony, and getting expelled by the NYFCC on 1.13 as a result) had been sufficiently reported. The … Read more