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 calleditwhatitwas, 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 summerof2020.
One of the more significant responses to my 1.25.16report 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.
2026hindsight: Gaydos had his head up his woke-cheerleading glee club woo-woo rectum, and I was channeling the spirit of DaltonTrumbo.
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.
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.
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.
Either way she sounds sincere in a “I really don’t give a shit” sort of way.
Woman who lived in Hollywood for a decade claims Will Smith is gay.
“He’s always been gay. I lived in Hollywood for a decade. My boss was his agent at CAA for 8 years- would help him shuffle men in and out of their mansions.” pic.twitter.com/KNYviJwgSe
Day late, dollar short: If I’d been in Richard Rushfield‘s Ankler shoes, I probably would’ve thought twice about registering my discomfort over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger (i.e., passing around “Block the Merger” buttons).
A couple of days ago Rushfield decided to bond with “more than 1,000 actors, directors and writers” who signed a letter protesting Paramount’s buying WBD. Paramount not only saw red but has reportedly declared it won’t be throwing The Ankler any ad money during the forthcoming 2026-2027 Oscar season.
Rushfield: “Both the Wrap and Page Six pieces are accurate to the best of my knowledge, but I’m not directly involved in sales stuff and am also [at Cinemacon] so missing out on much of the fuss.”
Quote given to Page Six: “[Paramount] obviously has an issue with Richard’s reporting and him signing the letter. It’s reached a bit of a boiling point. Their reaction is now one of the main storylines, which is so counter to what they were aiming for — now we’re all taking about these buttons.”
2026 has been a slumping, slumbering, soporific year so far…three and a half months of “who really cares?” Except, that is, for two excellent foreign-made flicks I’ve seen, reviewed and derived significant pleasure from: Hasan Hadi‘s The President’s Cake and Francois Ozon‘s The Stranger
Otherwise things have basically been bad, droopy and debilitating, although the pace will start to perk up during April’s second half — Kirk Jones‘ I Swear (4.24), Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael (4.24), Peter Farrelly‘s Balls Up (debuting today on Amazon…4.15…Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Sacha Baron Cohen), David Frankel‘s The Devil Wears Prada 2 (5.1)…what else?
I hated the idea of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie existing as a feature. I spat upon it. Emerald Fennell‘s Wuthering Heights…nope. Gore Verbinski‘s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die…never saw it, don’t care. (Maybe I should have.) I didn’t “hate” Project Hail Mary but it made me feel badly…it brought me down, left me feeling alienated, vaguely put off. I thought Maggie Gylllenhaal‘s The Bride! was mostly appalling. Nothing got to me except for Cake and Stranger. Everything else either stunk or meh’ed me to death.
I still haven’t seen Steven Soderbergh‘s The Christophers.
I actually quite loved Season #2 of The Pitt….forgot to mention that.
