OK, I gotta clean some of this out!
:: Two reviews of the apparently shitty new movie about Ronald Reagan, first off. Now, I haven’t seen the movie and I’ve no intention of doing so, because I make no secret of my loathing for Reagan and for everything he stood for, and my firm conviction that Reagan’s assumption of the Presidency marks an almost perfect inflection point in our nation’s history when everything just started going awry. And my generation, Generation X, grew up firmly steeped in the ongoing mythology of Reagan and his “Morning in America” bullshit, which I see as a huge reason why our nation is still holding itself back.
Anyway, this from Slate:
Like Reagan the actor and Reagan the president, Reagan the new movie has a strained relationship with reality. In director Sean McNamara’s biopic, the Gipper, played by Dennis Quaid, can do no wrong. Charming, principled, and relentlessly optimistic, McNamara’s Reagan single-handedly resuscitates the U.S. economy, brings down the Soviet Union, and returns the nation to glory. Suffice it to say, such a hagiographic treatment requires countless omissions, distortions, and outright fabrications. Worse still, perhaps, Reagan is bloated and tedious—its lack of focus and vision exacerbated only by an insulting 135-minute runtime. This is an affront to both history and cinema, to both reality and fantasy.
And this from Substack writer Nathan Rabin:
This isn’t a movie. It’s right-wing propaganda that crams canned uplift down the audience’s throat for well over two hours. The score goes overboard on soaring strings that never stop reminding us that we are watching the inspirational story of a great Christian, a great Republican, and a great man.
Only one man possessed the testicular fortitude to take on Marxists eager to use Hollywood as a propaganda arm for the Soviet Union: Ronald Reagan, AKA the greatest human being and Christian ever to bless this planet with his sublime presence.
Watching Reagan reminded me of a classic, Robert Smigel-written sketch called “Ronald Reagan: Mastermind” about how the Gipper only pretended to be a doddering lightweight happy to while away his days doing photo ops and giving speeches to friendly audiences when he’s really a ferociously driven, hands-on obsessive intimately involved with everything his administration is doing, particularly clandestine endeavors.
A team of oxen couldn’t drag me to see this movie.
:: Losers Win: Guardians of the Galaxy Turns 10.
One topic that comes up often on social media is “List your favorite Marvel movies!”, and sometimes folks are surprised when I list the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies in my top two spots. My reason is simple: of all the movies Marvel has made in the “Golden Age” that started with Iron Man and wrapped up with Avengers: Endgame, and for my money there’s not a single bad movie in that run and quite a few really, really good ones, the first two Guardians movies come closest by far to making me feel like I’m back in my room as a kid, on a rainy day, reading comics. (I have not seen the third Guardians film yet.)
It’s a testament to the imagination and tonal control of writer-director James Gunn that impediments that might’ve stopped another trilogy in its tracks become mere speed bumps. Gunn’s as much of a pop music obsessive as a comics obsessive—the films are filled with music video-like montages and action set pieces built around specific tunes. So it makes sense to think of the main characters as a band with an evolving lineup and the three movies as albums with no bad songs on them. There’s enough individual flavor to stand the test of time, even though the trends and fads that originally brought them into existence have faded.
You could add Gunn’s name to a list of distinctive directors who should’ve made a musical by now, given their creative tendencies, but he already has three times (five if you count “The Suicide Squad” and its spinoff, the Max series “Peacemaker”). The musicality of the movies extends beyond the music-driven sequences. The banter between the characters has a pleasing, teasing rhythm, with delayed punchlines going off at unexpected moments. In each movie, the momentum and goodwill generated by the performances and the filmmaking means that the entire enterprise seems to walk with a spring in its step. Or maybe I should’ve said “power-walk,” which is what Gunn loves to have the Guardians do right before a big action sequence, like band members putting their battle faces on as they move from the wings to the stage and try to forget their egos and become part of a hive-mind.
Also, those first two Guardians movies did something else: They made me feel the way Star Wars did back when George Lucas was still running the show. In the Disney Star Wars era, the only property that has actually come closest to making me feel that way was the teevee series The Book of Boba Fett, which seems to be generally disliked by most fans. Go figure.
:: Here’s a really negative movie review. I don’t know anything about the movie at all, really, I just like to read hilariously negative movie reviews sometimes.
:: Maestro Daniel Barenboim discusses Wagner.
First of all, Wagner had a great understanding of, or intuition for (or perhaps a combination of the two), acoustics. He was the first person to have that, I think, except perhaps Berlioz, and in a certain way Liszt, although Liszt was more limited to the piano. By acoustics I mean the presence of sound in a room, the concept of time and space. Wagner really developed that concept musically. Which means that a lot of his criticism of performances of his own time, conducted by Mendelssohn and other people, was directed at what he considered a very superficial kind of interpretation, namely, an interpretation that took no risks, that didn’t go to the abyss, that tried, in other words, to find a golden path without having the extremes. Of course, this is an impossibility and can inevitably lead to superficiality. This also had an influence on the speed at which the music was performed, because if the content was poor, the speed had to be greater. Therefore Wagner complains bitterly about Mendelssohn’s tempi.
:: Buffalo’s five-term Mayor, Byron Brown, has seemingly finally managed to find a new gig, after spending most of the last few years giving off massive “GET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE!” vibes in his current one. (The question of “Gee, Byron, why the hell did you insist in running for a fifth term, then?” doesn’t seem to get asked much, for some reason…but come to that, the answer to that is for me far less interesting than interrogating the citizens of Buffalo as to why the hell they insisted on electing five times a bumbling guy whose record as Mayor is nearly 20 years of fiscal incompetence, no problems actually getting solved, and a whole damn lot of ribbon cuttings and “keys to the city” handed out to football players.) Anyway, Alan Bedenko notes something about the political news coverage in this region.
(As for Brown heading up Off Track Betting, whatever. That organization has precisely zero impact on my daily life, so if Brown wants to go be incompetent there, fine.)
:: Anchorman Wouldn’t Have Been Nearly As Great Without Christina Applegate.
This is absolutely true. Applegate’s work in Anchorman (which may be my favorite American comedy film ever, the thing still makes me laugh to this day) is just wonderful, as she captures perfectly her blend of exasperation with, admiration for, and attraction to Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy (and Ferrell reciprocates with his own perfect blend of confusion by, disapproval of, instant lust for, and eventual admiration of Applegate’s Veronica Corningstone).
Never a prude but absolutely not tolerating Ron’s chauvinistic behavior, Veronica bewitches him from the first moment they meet at that pool party. Feeling studly in his robe and swim trunks, he walks up to her, ready to pounce, only to be disarmed by her scrutinizing stare. She doesn’t know who he is—doesn’t recognize what a big deal (in his own mind) he is—and so Ron starts to sputter, his pickup lines powerless in the face of such poise. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to him. Throughout “Anchorman,” he will try to get the upper hand, but he never succeeds. Veronica is too assured. Dumb guys are funny, but they’re never as funny as when they’re cut down to size by a smart woman.
Yup, that. Applegate has been famously struggling with MS the last few years, which has sadly put her on the sidelines of what seemed to be her prime as an actress; her work in the Netflix series Dead To Me is some amazing, wonderful work indeed. She is really, really good.
:: Finally, Sheila O’Malley writes about Gena Rowlands, an actress for whom she has expressed special appreciation over the years.
There will always be a place in Hollywood for beautiful blondes. Rowlands wasn’t a Marilyn-Monroe type. She was one of those “chilly” blondes, the kind Hitchcock loved. Rowlands was not a haughty person, but she often played characters with a whiff of standoffishness. Hollywood isn’t known for its sensitive handling of beautiful talented blondes, but it’s easy to imagine that Gena Rowlands, who loved acting (“I never wanted to do anything else. This was it.”), would have had a respectable career, with or without her husband. Cassavetes didn’t lift her out of obscurity. Nevertheless, she wasn’t being seen the way she needed to be seen. The world didn’t yet know what it was missing.
:: I will end this with a picture: a nifty Darth Vader window decal I saw on a car last week.
