Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 85 - Thirteen Lives

On this episode, Barry and I get trapped in a cave and watch Ron Howard's Thirteen Lives, now streaming on Amazon. Topics discussed include the raging mediocrity of company man Ron Howard, the dangers of spelunking and the joys of anesthesia.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 85 - Thirteen Lives

Thanks for listening!

©2022

7th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Writer/director Aaron Sorkin out did himself with this masturbatorial piece of baby boomer trash. The only thing worse than the writing and acting in this movie is the directing. Just an abysmal movie in every respect.

Da Five Bloods - Just when you thought Spike Lee might have gotten his groove back, he churns out this amateurish hunk of shit. This cringy movie is so poorly directed as to be embarrassing. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Hillbilly Elegy - Hillbilly Elegy is the cinematic equivalent of watching two toothless, elderly cousins have sex in a dumpster filled with month old egg salad during a heatwave. This movie should be considered a crime against humanity.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. I would rather stick 112 toothpicks down my urethra than watch this movie again.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Sacha Baron Cohen - The Trial of the Chicago 7 : Funnyman Cohen managed to transform Abbie Hoffman into Borat in one of the most unintentionally funny performances in cinema history. Cohen set the art of acting back roughly 75 years with his cornucopia of ham-handed, God-awful accents - none of which were correct for Hoffman.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

Da Five Bloods - Mine explosion scene : This scene is so transparently ridiculous and so egregiously staged and executed it made my colon twinge. The fact that a professional director shot this scene is a travesty.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Final courtroom scene: It was tough narrowing this down to just one scene…but I did my best. This scene where the audience in the courtroom slow claps in appreciation for the courage of the Chicago 7 is like something from a rejected junior high school play. Just the ultimate in cringe.

Hillbilly Elegy - Literally any scene : Just awful. Every scene is just so fucking awful.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. Just atrocious how many awful scenes there are in this abomination. Pick any scene and watch it and try not to light yourself on fire.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - This laughably bad movie was actually nominated for a bunch of Oscars. That is utterly insane. It is also adored by audiences….which is equally insane. What is the world coming to when a piece of cinematic fecal matter like this is exalted? God help us all.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE - Ron Howard : Ron Howard is one of the all-time worst big-time filmmakers. Howard’s movies are so trite they make Happy Days episodes look like Raging Bull. After committing cinematic genocide with Hillbilly Elegy, Howard should have his Oscar for A Beautiful Mind revoked, and be executed on the steps of the Mayberry Courthouse. Thanks for nothing Ron Howard…I’ll see you in hell…where no doubt your films will be playing on a loop.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Andrew Cuomo - I have been telling people Andrew Cuomo was a piece of shit well before it was ever fashionable. Last summer the media, most notably Andrew’s retarded brother Fredo…oops, I mean Chris, and the public, were enamored with Andrew for being such a great leader during the pandemic. Cuomo was so intoxicated by the smell of his own farts he actually “wrote” a book about what a great leader he was during the pandemic…AS NEW YORK WAS BEING RAVAGED BY THE PANDEMIC! I wrote a year ago that Cuomo was a piece of shit and that people were dying because of it…but nobody listened.

Cuomo has always been full of shit. He had done tremendous harm to the New York state health care system before the pandemic even started and then when it did he did even more damage. He also fucked over seniors with his nursing home policy and then lied about it to the feds.

Then once the bloom came off the Cuomo rose and people acknowledged he was a piece of shit, a cavalcade of sexual harassment allegations became public. I have no idea if these allegations are true…and to be honest, I don’t really care. Andrew Cuomo is a piece of shit of epic proportions even if he is entirely innocent of harassing these women…which I seriously doubt.

Andrew Cuomo and brother Chris are nothing but vapid bullshit artists cashing in on their family name. My hope is that Andrew Cuomo, that Sonny Corelone wannabe thug, gets his comeuppance on the Causeway just like Sonny did in The Godfather. I also hope Andy’s numb-nuts, mental defective brother Fredo/Chris has a “boating accident” while saying a Hail Mary out on Lake Tahoe. The world would be so much better if it was devoid of Cuomos.

Andrew Cuomo…you have always been a gigantic piece of shit, but now your legacy is cemented…welcome to the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame!!

P.O.S. ALL-STARS -

Every Asshole in the “I Take Responsibility” video - A collection of imbecilic, dead-eyed actors morally preening by reading words on camera so that everyone knows they hate racism and “take responsibility” for “every not so funny joke, every unfair stereotype” was one of the more nauseating displays in a truly repulsive year. Upon seeing the “I Take Responsibility” video the Aerosmith song “My Fist Your Face” (1985- Done With Mirrors) immediately came to mind. I just want to let the vacuous virtue signaling celebrity twats of “I Take Responsibility” know that I cannot take responsibility for what I will do to them if I ever have the great misfortune to meet them, but I promise you my rage will be more sincere than their phony pandering.

Every Asshole in the “Imagine” video - Imagine being so self-absorbed that you think making a video of you and your wealthy friends singing the saccharine anthem ”Imagine” from your mansions during a pandemic when ordinary people are suffering unimaginable-to-you hardships is a really good idea. Where’s Mark David Chapman when you need him?

NBA/WBNA– This year the NBA emulated the flopping and vacant histrionics of its players by doing an extravagantly exaggerated, dramatically over-the-top embrace of “social justice”.

In the NBA bubble in Orlando – The Happiest Place on Earth,  ‘Black Lives Matter’ was painted on every court and players wore trite woke slogans on the back of their jerseys. The absurdity and obscenity of filthy rich, pampered, dim-witted athletes, safely sealed in five star hotels with all expenses paid, adored by millions of people worldwide, wearing jerseys demanding fans “See Us” and “Love Us” is so astronomical as to be immeasurable.

No one gives a shit about the hapless WNBA because even their all-stars would be beaten in a game against a quality boys high school basketball team, but that didn’t stop them from trying to get attention by desperately embracing social issues as well last Summer. After Jacob Blake was shot by a cop in Wisconsin, WNBA players didn’t wear shirts against police brutality, but instead wore shirts celebrating Jacob Blake. Blake had a warrant out for him for sexual assault and domestic abuse of the woman who called the cops on him the day he was shot. Mr. Blake seems like an odd choice for a female basketball league to hold up as a civil rights icon.

LeBron James - This past year the Greatest Receding Hairline of All-Time proved himself to be a social justice charlatan with testicles the size of raisins. Last season, after then Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protestors, LeBron kissed China’s ass and threw Daryl Morey under the bus in order to keep the Chinese money train rolling.

LeBron claimed he couldn’t speak up on China’s brutality toward Hong Kong protestors and Uighers because he wasn’t informed, but then turned around and said Daryl Morey was uninformed too…which of course doesn’t make any sense. How could LeBron know Morey was uninformed if he himself was uninformed?

The narcissistic neanderthal and integrity deficient Lebron then traded in his Nikes for clown shoes last summer by wearing a Breonna Taylor “Say Her Name” t-shirt and doing an egregiously adolescent and nauseatingly pretentious Wakanda salute when Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman died.

His comments in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the shooting of Jacob Blake about how he was terrified to leave his house (which is a mansion in a gated Beverly Hills community) because cops are hunting black people were so moronically imbecilic as to be absurd, but he upped the ante when in the wake of the police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus Ohio, LeBron posted a picture of the cop who shot her accompanied by a demand for “accountability”.

I believe LeBron when he says he was uninformed about China since he seems perpetually uninformed about pretty much everything. For example, apparently LeBron didn’t know (or care) that the cop in the Ma’Khia Bryant case was saving a young black girls life by by shooting Bryant, who was poised to stab the young black girl her in the chest when she was shot and killed.

Another example of LeBron’s emotionalist buffoonery is his Breonna Taylor fetish…I am willing to bet that LeBron has no idea about the circumstances around that tragic case, such as the fact that Breonna’s boyfriend actually fired the first shot in the battle - wounding a cop, and that Breonna was shot - not in bed as most people believe, but in the hallway next to her boyfriend - who had just fired his weapon.

Look, I am not saying LeBron should shut up and dribble, he should, like anyone, speak his mind, but maybe he should actually get informed before he makes comments on anything.

And if LeBron doesn’t want to be a shameless hypocrite maybe he should stand up for things when it actually costs him something, as opposed to only when it benefits him and his wallet. So maybe if he spoke out against Chinese brutality against Hong Kong protestors and Uighers, then he might have some moral authority when it comes to his comments regarding race and policing…no matter how ill-informed and emotionalists they may be…and they are almost entirely ill-informed and emotionalist.

Anyway…LeBron is a great basketball player and that is evidenced by his being a 17 time NBA all-star…but he is also a gigantic piece of shit, as evidenced by his inclusion on this year’s Piece of Shit All-Star team.

Every Asshole “Health Professional” Who Signed the Letter Telling People to Get Out and Protest Against “Racism” During a Pandemic - These assholes decided to flush their integrity and sell their credibility when they said people should be in lockdown during the pandemic…except if it was to join a protest against “racism”. Of course, these pricks also said to gather for any other reason - especially to protest against the lockdown, was a super spreader event and extremely dangerous (and racist). According to these geniuses having the “correct” politics makes you immune from infection.

Anyone with half a brain in their head could see how detrimental to public health this bit of medical virtue signaling really was…but it took months for anyone in the media to actually even gently question the illogic behind this movement.

So when medical professionals or the media now wonder why people aren’t getting vaccinated or why the public doesn’t trust them…look no further than the action of these pieces of shit for an answer.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!

This article contains previously published material.

©2021

Hillbilly Elegy and the Culture War Clash

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 11 seconds

IS HILLBILLY ELEGY A TRULY TERRIBLE MOVIE OR ARE LIBERAL CRITICS BLATANTLY BIASED?

The new Netflix film Hillbilly Elegy chronicles life among a dysfunctional white working class Appalachian family and savage reviews from liberal critics has triggered another battle in the culture war.

Hillbilly Elegy, the new film from Oscar winning director Ron Howard, premiered to much fanfare and controversy on Netflix Tuesday.

The film, which stars perennial Oscar nominees Amy Adams and Glenn Close, is based on J.D. Vance’s 2016 autobiography of the same name, and tells the story of how Vance escaped his chaotic upbringing at the hands of his white-working class Appalachian family, most notably his volcanically erratic mother Bev and his hard-edged grandmother Mamaw, and became a Yale Law School graduate.

The book Hillbilly Elegy became a cause célèbre in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election victory because it gave the establishment a glimpse into the misunderstood white working class and poor folk from flyover country that had come out en masse for Trump.

Among the media elite, the shine wore off of Vance and his book pretty quickly, though, as he was labeled too conservative for consumption after having the temerity to label his hometown hillbilly culture as corrosive and self-destructive. Vance’s critique of the Appalachian white working class was just too pro-personal responsibility for the liberal establishment’s tastes.

It is in this context that Hillbilly Elegy has come out in film form and generated a great deal of vitriol and venom from mainstream movie critics.

For example, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe proclaimed it “poverty porn”. Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post called it “almost laughably bad – if it weren’t so melodramatic”. And Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times derisively decried the movie as “an unwieldy slop bucket of door-smashing, child-slapping, husband-immolating histrionics”.

These critical eviscerations are not anomalies as the film currently has a dismal 25% critical score review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. There is some pushback though, as the film currently boasts a robust 89% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.

In response to the cavalcade of critical denouncements, noted conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted about the film “I've seen "Hillbilly Elegy." Amy Adams and Glenn Close are both terrific. The movie is a well-told family drama. The reason the critics are crapping all over it is simple: the book was treated as humanizing "Trump supporters," and is now a Bad Book™. So the movie is also Bad™.”

My experience of Hillbilly Elegy began when I read and the book back in 2016. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it to be an extremely insightful and compelling account.

Hillbilly Elegy is an important book and it should have been an important movie…but having seen it I can report that it most assuredly is not. Instead it is a maudlin, dramatically obtuse, narratively incoherent, appallingly poorly made and atrociously amateurish cinematic venture.

Director Ron Howard is an artistic eunuch not exactly known for his deft cinematic touch, and he is as ham-fisted as ever on Hillbilly Elegy.  Howard clumsily creates a contrived drama and fumbles the film’s flimsy narrative to such an egregious degree as to be cinematically criminal.

Howard’s visually unimaginative, painfully trite and obscenely shallow approach reduces Vance’s dramatically potent life story into a cinematically flaccid cross between a Lifetime movie, an ABC After-School Special and an anti-drug public service announcement.

As for the acting? Amy Adams is one of the best actresses around, but her performance as the volatile Bev is forced and rings entirely false. Decked out in her oversized ‘mom jeans’, with frizzy hair and sans makeup, Adams is devoid of both subtly and humanity. Adams’ performance is such an over-the-top, one-note caricature it is actually embarrassing.

Glenn Close contrived performance as the foul-mouthed matriarch Mamaw doesn’t fare much better. Both Close and Adams are obviously angling for an Oscar with their ugly-fied, faux-gritty acting, but they end up being uncomfortably shallow and cartoonish in their roles.

Ben Shapiro claiming that Hillbilly Elegy is “well-told” and that Adams and Close are “terrific” only proves that he is either being intentionally contrarian in order to stoke the culture war or he really doesn’t know a goddamn thing about movies and acting. I promise you, Hillbilly Elegy is not the hill(billy) that Ben Shapiro should be willing to die on.

With that said, I have no doubt that liberal critics are gleefully overplaying the very bad hand that is Hillbilly Elegy. If the film were made by a minority director as opposed to a pasty white one, and dealt with black poverty as opposed to poor white people, their criticisms of it would be substantially more delicate and thoughtful.

White liberal critics have long been protective and paternalistic toward black artists and films. Examples of which can be found in the critical reception of Spike Lee’s film Da Five Bloods (2020) and Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018). Both movies are dreadful cinematic disasters, but critics fawned over Da Five Bloods and were wholly encouraging of DuVernay’s abysmal film because of its “diversity”.

Hillbilly Elegy could have been treated with the same kid gloves and rose-colored glasses as Lee and DuVernay’s work- but wasn’t, and one can surmise that the white working class subject matter and the conservative politics of the protagonist are a major reason why.

So is Hillbilly Elegy truly that terrible or as Ben Shapiro suggests are liberal movie critics blatantly biased against it?

The answer is definitely…YES…to both.

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Ron Howard at his worst. Just an embarrassingly terrible movie with terrible performances and terrible writing and terrible directing and everything is terrible.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Solo: A Star Wars Story - A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars           Popcorn Curve* Rating: 3.5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An enjoyable and well paced movie. Not Oscar material, but a good old fashioned bit of big budget entertainment. 

Solo: A Star Wars Story, written by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Ron Howard*, is the origin story of that lovable and charming rogue, Han Solo, from the original Star Wars films. The movie stars Alden Ehrenreich as Solo with supporting turns from Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson and Donald Glover.

As I have stated many times before, I am more a Planet of the Apes devotee than a Star Wars guy, and so I would consider myself to be, at best, a marginal Star Wars fan. I do thoroughly enjoy the underlying mythology of the franchise but have often found the cinematic execution of that mythology to be a bit lacking at times. My moderation when it comes to all things Star Wars can be both a blessing and a curse, as it means I never get too excited over a new Star Wars movie, but I also never get too downtrodden if it fails to be transcendent. 

With all of that said, before I saw Solo my starting point was that I had very, very low expectations. Those low expectations were born out of the swamp of bad press the film has been receiving for well over a year now. The whispers of problems turned into a scream last June when Dear Leader Mickey Mouse fired the original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, six months into shooting.

The Disney politburo then followed up this stunning move by bringing in the ultimate vanilla studio hack Ron Howard to do reshoots and finish production. Hollywood was abuzz over the beheading of Lord and Miller by Disney hatchet woman, Obergruppenfuhrer Kathleen Kennedy, and news of very costly re-shoots bloating the film's budget only fueled the spreading wildfire of bad buzz that can cripple a big budget movie. 

That bad buzz came to fruition when on opening night, a good friend of mine, let's call him Doug, who is a stalwart Star Wars nerd, went to a 10 pm showing (in costume, of course) with his wife here in Los Angeles, and they were the only ones in the theater. Another friend of mine went to opening night in Minneapolis and suffered the same fate sans costume. 

Empty theaters on opening night for a Star Wars movie was a strong indicator that Darth Mickey had a big bust on his hands with Solo. The subsequent box office numbers were underwhelming, at least when compared to other Star Wars movies, and so the media narrative was now set in stone…Solo was a bomb. Headlines abounded on the internet questioning if Solo was the beginning of the end for the Star Wars franchise, some articles pondered if audiences stayed away because the film wasn't diverse enough (eye roll!). 

It was in the midst of this negativity storm that out of a sense of duty to my vocation as a film critic, I snuck off to see Solo. I was so sure that Solo would be awful that I was trying to come up with a clever little spin on the old joke about the bad singer who is implored to "sing a solo…so-low we can't hear you". 

But then I ran into a problem…I went and saw Solo and lo and behold I ended up really enjoying it. Midway through the film I actually thought to myself, "you know what...this is an entertaining romp". Why I was using the term "romp" is a mystery to me as is makes me sound like some hackneyed reviewer like Rex Reed or something, but the truth is…Solo really is a fun romp!

As someone who loathes Ron Howard films, it is difficult for me to give him credit for Solo's success, so I will simply say it is to the credit of all three directors on the film, Lord, Miller and Howard, that the pacing of the movie is so well-done. There is virtually no wasted time or energy in Solo, and it never loses steam and moves at a very compelling clip. 

Another reason why the film is so darn entertaining is the lead actor Alden Ehrenreich.  Ehrenreich is in a tough spot, recreating an iconic role, Han Solo, created by Harrison Ford, but having to devolve the character into an earlier iteration of itself. Ehrenreich tactically increases the swagger and the snark to near adolescent levels at times which ends up being quite effective. To his credit, Ehrenreich possesses the sheer charisma and charm to carry the entire Solo enterprise, which is a talent you simply cannot teach a young actor, they either have it or they don't. 

Being a movie star is a tough gig, as you must have the energy, stamina, force of will, ambition and dynamic magnetism to carry the weight of a major motion picture, all while being continuously beautiful and charming. When I first noticed Ehrenreich it was in the Warren Beatty directed film Rules Don't Apply. The film is abysmal and I only watched maybe a half hour of it on cable, but in that brief time Ehrenreich made me sit up in my seat and say "who is that?" For whatever reason he just jumped off the screen, and no doubt casting people had the same reaction as he made quite a leap going from Rules Don't Apply to the iconic title character in Solo. (as a side note the actress playing opposite Ehrenreich in Rules Don't Apply also jumped off the screen at me, she was beautiful and talented, her name is Lily Collins, and after looking into her I discovered she is famed pop star Phill Collin's daughter...keep and eye out for her)

Ehrenreich's skill is impressive in Solo as he never falls into the trap of caricature when playing Han Solo. His Solo is a real life human being, trying to make his way in the world and find out who he really is, or at least what identity he will adopt. This may be blasphemy to Star Wars fans, but I am telling you, Ehrenreich's Han Solo is a considerably more complex and better acting job that Harrison Ford's version ever was. 

As for the rest of the cast, for the most part they all do solid and steady work. Emilia Clarke is her usual luminous self as Qi-ra. Clarke is both alluring and approachable and she imbues Qi-ra with an unspoken mysterious wound that makes the character very compelling.

Woody Harrelson continues his streak of doing quality work in big budget franchise films by playing Tobias Beckett in Solo, a sort of criminal mentor to the young Han Solo. Harrelson has really evolved into a superb actor, and while he doesn't have a hell of a lot to work with in Solo, he makes the very most of what he does have. 

Donald Glover plays the young Lando Calrissian, and while he often feels like he is simply doing a spot-on Billy Dee Williams impersonation, he does it with enough panache and style to make it enjoyable. 

The one dour note on the acting is Paul Bettany as Dryden Vos. Vos is a big time crime lord and Bettany simply lacks the gravitas and menace to be able to pull off the character with any believability. I later learned that Michael K. Williams was originally cast in the role and shot the majority of it but when Howard was brought aboard to direct Williams was replaced by Bettany because his schedule conflicted with re-shoots. This is a shame as Williams is a far superior actor to Bettany, and in this role I can only imagine how fantastic he would've been. 

Besides Solo himself, the two best characters in the film are the droid L3 and Chewbacca. Both of these characters have very intriguing and poignant story lines that are rich with political and cultural meaning…so much so that I would love to see a stand alone film about either character or both. I doubt that will ever happen, but it SHOULD happen. 

Solo is still getting a lot of bad press and the box office is only going to continue to disappoint its voracious Disney overlords, but in my opinion it was an entertaining movie. It is more akin to Chinese food than Filet Mignon, as it ultimately doesn't stay with you long after you see it, but that doesn't mean it is an abject failure. Solo entertained me, and to me that makes it a success.

If you want to lose yourself for two hours of big budget Star Wars fun then Solo is the film for you..and if you have no one to go see it with you, then do what I did and see it solo!! (See what I did there? That is a play on words…the film is titled Solo and I said to see it solo…just one more bit of evidence proving how clever I am!!). If you want a transcendent cinematic experience that will give deeper meaning and purpose to your life…better to sit this one out. 

*The Popcorn Curve judges a film based on its entertainment merits as a franchise/blockbuster movie, as opposed to my regular rating system which judges a film solely on its cinematic and artistic merits.

©2018