8th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards: 2021 Edition

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The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. 2021 was a particularly heinous one for cinema, so the Slip-Me-A-Mickeys flourished in a very target rich environment.

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 Tender Bar – A boring, dramatically incoherent coming of age tale that makes an episode of The Wonder Years look like Lawrence of Arabia. George Clooney may be the very worst director making big time Hollywood movies. His butchery of this film is done with a chainsaw and not scalpel.  

Being the Ricardos – This cheesy, ham-handed Hollywood humping manages to turn Lucille ball and Desi Arnaz into the two dullest people in entertainment history.

Eternals – This is the worst Marvel movie I’ve ever seen and it isn’t even close. That is quite an accomplishment in cinematic futility.

Space Jam: A New Legacy – You know what would be fun…to put a legitimately moronic meathead who can barely speak a coherent sentence, LeBron James, on-screen with a bunch of corporate intellectual property and let them play basketball. Watching LeBron’s hairline recede is more entertaining.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

Space Jam: A New Legacy – Hey, look at that, at least LeBron won something this year.

Worst Performance of the Year

LeBron James – Space Jam: A New Legacy - LeBron is a mental and moral midget, but he’s also got the charisma of a pile of week-old dog shit…so he’s got that going for him.

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog – Speaking of dog shit…Benedict Cumberbatch, or as my friend Dave calls him, Bend-her-dick Cunt-her-snatch, is supposed to be a menacing old-school cowboy in this movie, but from scene one he’s sashaying around like he’s working it on RuPaul’s runway. If they’d cast the cowboy from the Village People in this role it would’ve been less obviously gay.

Adam Driver – House of Gucci – Adam Driver is a giant, walking, talking anus. When you put him in Italian clothes, with Italian glasses, and have him speak with an Italian accent, he morphs into being a giant, walking, talking anus wearing Italian clothes and glasses, that has an Italian accent.

Jared Leto – House of Gucci – Leto’s performance in this movie makes Father Guido Sarducci look like Sir Laurence Olivier. A master class in awful acting.

Lady Gaga – House of Gucci – Gaga made me gag-gag with her wandering accent and hyper-theatrical posing in this dreadful movie. It is one of the great tragedies of human kind that Gaga now takes herself seriously as an actress.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

Jared Leto – Leto is the Leonardo da Vinci of awful over-acting.

Most Overrated Film of the Year

CODA – CODA is a Hallmark Channel movie that somehow won the Oscar for Best Picture. It is the worst film to win Best Picture in the history of the Academy Awards. The script is awful, the direction amateurish, the acting, including Troy Kotsur, is painful to watch. It also astonishes me that critics didn’t eviscerate this film but instead praised its soft-peddled, after school special bullshit.

The Power of the Dog – Jane Campion is a shitty director and this is a shitty movie. Arthouse fool’s gold that fooled a lot of people…but not me. Trite, vacuous, vapid and venal, this movie is poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted and just all-around poor.

West Side Story – Steven Spielberg can make any movie he wants…and he made THIS piece of shit? If I want to watch dance teams square off in embarrassing street fights, I’ll just watch the original, better version of the story. An entirely useless exercise in historical cinematic revisionism.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

CODA – I wish I was deaf and blind so I’d never have to see or hear about this stupid movie.

Worst Big Budget/Blockbuster/Action/Comedy of the Year

Eternals - See Above.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife – A terrific movie if you want to destroy a long-loved franchise with talentless teens and a terrible script.

Matrix: Resurrection – The Matrix was great. But literally every Matrix movie since the original has gotten worse by at 75%. This abysmal piece of shit puts the franchise deep into negative territory.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards goes to…

Eternals – This was a tough choice as these movies are all abysmal, but sitting through the two hour and thirty-six-minute woke slog that was Eternals was utterly excruciating to the point of torture.

Worst Director

George Clooney – Ironically, Clooney is on one of the most impressive runs of futility for a director since the Joel Schumacher heyday. Just when you think he can’t do any worse, he puts out The Tender Bar, and proves you wrong.

Aaron Sorkin – Sorkin proved last year with The Trial of the Chicago 7 that he was one of the worst directors of his generation, and he keeps the streak alive with Being the Ricardos.

Chloe Zhao – Zhao won an Oscar last year for Nomadland. This year she showed off what an incredibly shitty director she is with Eternals. Good for her.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

All three of these bags of shit. They’re all fucking terrible.

Special Achievement in Cinematic Malpractice

George Clooney – Clooney’s ability to continue to make one movie more awful than the last is a tribute to the endless supply of suck-ups and sycophants in Hollywood and to Clooney’s delusional sense of self. The shitshow that is The Tender Bar is a testament, and should stand as a monument, to the hackery of the ultimate Hollywood asshole...George Clooney.

POS Hall of Fame –

The Smith Family

At the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards, the Smith family were voted to the Piece of Shit All-Stars. This year they’ve made the big leap to become Piece of Shit Hall of Famers!

Here’s a brief glimpse of what I wrote back at the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey awards regarding the Smiths.

“This year we got to hear from Jada Pinkett-Smith how her husband was snubbed by the Academy Awards because he was black. We also got to hear how Jada was boycotting the Oscars in a show of solidarity with other snubbed black actors…which was convenient since she wasn't invited (as Chris Rock hilariously pointed out). I have one simple request for the entire Smith family...Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow…please shut the fuck up and go away forever. Will Smith is an abysmal hack of an actor and a dopey embarrassment as a "rapper". Jada Pinkett-Smith is a fly on the shit that is Will Smith, she desperately needs to bottle her manufactured self-righteous anger, stop talking immediately and vanish with her equally obnoxious other half. Jaden and Willow are kids, so they have an outside chance to not be as malignantly narcissistic as their God-awful parents, but I gotta be honest… it isn't looking very good as they aren't off to the best possible start in not following in their egotistical parents footsteps.”

Well, well, well, looks like I hit the nail on the head six years ago regarding the shitbag Smith family.

The truth is Will “Limp Willie” Smith has always been one of the biggest pieces of shit in Hollywood, and now with his slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars, everyone else gets to see the reality that I’ve known for a long time.

Will has been a piece of shit from day one. He is a bad joke as a rapper and his music has been an embarrassment for all sentient beings from the get-go. His acting career has also been an embarassment from day one. Will Smith is now and always has been a shitty rapper, shitty actor and shitty person. He is, undoubtedly, an incorrigle twat.

Speaking of twats, Will’s wife, Jada, is a talentless, narcissistic whore who’s done a wonderful job of making a cuckold out of her impotent and equally talentless husband by fucking her son’s friend August Alsina. She’s also a wondrous mother who has churned out two of the most repulsive spawn in Hollywood – no small task.

Jaden Smith, Will and Jada’s son, tweeted in the aftermath of Will’s slapping Chris Rock, “that’s how we do it”. Oh, really tough guy? Well Jaden, I invite you to don one of your signature skirts, and then go out into the real world with your toothpick arms, slap somebody, and see what happens to your non-binary ass. I know you don’t know this because you’re an entitled dandy who has never been around a real man in your entire life, but the real world ain’t the Oscars or the movies, and you’re going to find that out the hard way if you ever prance out of your privileged bubble, bitch.

One can only hope that the Smiths, who as individuals and as a collective family, are the most noxious, odious and malignant narcissists in all of Hollywood, a stunning achievement, are sentenced to a life of being in each other’s presence. They deserve that torture, and we deserve that reprieve.

Congratulation Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow, you’re all well-deserving members of the Piece of Shit Hall-of-Fame! Now kindly go fuck yourselves you rancid cunts.

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!!which are the final awards show on the calender.

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award show on the 2021 calender. That means that 2021, the most dreadful year in recent cinema history, is now, officially and not-so-mercifully, over. Thank the good lord….and I pray that 2022 saves us from the cinematic hell that was 2021. As always…I am not optimistic.

©2022

94th Academy Awards: 2022 Oscar Prediction Post

So, the Academy Awards are once again upon us and once again no one gives a rat’s ass.

With my ear to the Hollywood ground the one thing that comes across very loudly is overwhelming silence and the over-abundance of indifference. It wasn’t always like this. Just a few years ago I remember Tinsel Town and its inhabitants being abuzz with Oscar talk, but no more.

The Academy has made major changes to its membership in the last few years, dumping older, whiter, male voters, in favor of a certainly more diverse, but also considerably less accomplished group of people. The results have been mixed at best.

The ratings for the show have consistently declined, but blaming that on the new Academy members is a stretch since the ratings have been declining for a decade.

Unfortunately, the Academy, and the changes it made, are just a reflection of the overall decline of film’s relevance in our culture. The movie industry is currently neck-deep in a self-defeating transformation that rewards identity tokenism and marginalizes craft, skill and talent. The current steep decline in cinema is a direct result of the of studios being more concerned with diversity and inclusion than with quality…and that is only going to get worse going forward. The Oscars reflect the current state of the movie industry by reducing their awards to merely being some sort of victimhood/identity Olympics, and not a celebration of the greatest in cinematic artistry.

This year’s Academy Awards are a perfect example. The ten films nominated for Best Picture are, frankly, all pretty forgettable if not fucking awful. The best among them are, at best, raging mediocrities.

Speaking of raging mediocrities, the hosts for the show, the first hosts in three years, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall, are another sign of the terrible times, as they’re a trio of half-wit has-beens and anonymous nobodies who would need to make quite a leap to hit the promised land of mediocrity.

Not a soul on the planet will tune in to specifically watch Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and that other lady I’ve never heard of, just like no one will tune in to see if the egregiously over-rated The Power of the Dog wins Best Picture.

No matter which film wins Best Picture, and the two favorites are The Power of the Dog and CODA, this ceremony and the ultimate winner of it will be almost instantaneously forgotten. If The Power of the Dog wins it will not be remembered kindly by history because history will, like the rest of humanity, ignore it.

If CODA wins it will easily be the worst film to ever win Best Picture, and history will mark this year as the unofficial end of the Oscars as any sort of cultural landmark. I guess that would be apropos since it would coincide with the end of the American Empire.

As for my power of prognostication regarding the Oscars, I used to be much better than I am now. For years I won every Oscar pool I entered and that was because the Academy members were so reliably predictable in their picks. Now, with the new Academy, I am less Nostradamus and more Nostradoofus.

Despite knowing some Academy members, and talking to lots of film industry people across the board and up and down the income scale, I still have no insight as to how the new Academy will vote. I know how they think, which is frightening, but am not even remotely sure how they’ll vote.

In other words, at this point I’m just guessing. But I’m confident I’ll still win my Oscar pools just because irrational confidence is a learned trait I’ve yet to discard.

With all of that said, here are my picks for the 94th Academy Awards.

Best Cinematography

•  The Power of the Dog – A female cinematographer is too much for the identity obsessed Academy to pass up, so The Power of the Dog eeks out a win over the visually impressive Dune.

Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Score, Best Visual Effects

•  Dune - Wins all of these and has a big night in the technical and below-the-line categories.

Best Hair and Makeup

•  The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Again…I’m guessing but feels about right.

Best Costume

•  Cruella – There’s a chance Dune wins this one too but I think Cruella takes the prize as it is the most dramatically fashionable costuming of all the nominees.

Best Documentary Short

•  The Queen of Basketball – I only chose this because Steph Curry and Shaq are producers on the film and Hollywood loves them some NBA star power.

Best Live Action Short

• The Long Goodbye – Riz Ahmed is involved in this film and again, Hollywood likes star power.

Best Animated Short

• Robin Robin- It has famous people in it, so I figure it will win.

Best Documentary

• Summer of Soul – Seems about right.

Best Supporting Actress

This seems set in stone. Ariana DeBose is going to win and maybe rightfully so. I thought she was the lone dynamic presence is Spielberg’s moribund musical retread.

Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter

*Ariana DeBose – West Side Story

Judi Dench – Belfast

Kirsten Dunst – The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis – King Richard

Best Supporting Actor

Quite a mixed bag in this category, but the tea leaves say Troy Kotsur will beat out Kodi Smit-McPhee. I think CODA is garbage, and all due respect to Kotsur, I don’t think he’s very good in that bad film. But what the hell do I know?

Ciaran Hinds – Belfast

*Troy Kotsur – CODA

Jesse Plemons – The Power of the Dog

J.K. Simmons – Being the Ricardos

Kodi Smit-McPhee - The Power of the Dog

Best Original Screenplay

I think this is going to be a weird category. PT Anderson is a genius but Licorice Pizza is not even remotely his best work. The old Academy would’ve awarded Kenneth Branagh for Belfast…and I think the new Academy does the same exact thing because they don’t know who else to reward so they choose the actor Branagh. Don’t count out PT Anderson though…he’s got a legit shot. If Don’t Look Up wins, and it’s got a legit chance, then hopefully a meteor will immediately hit earth and put us all out of our misery.

*Belfast

Don’t Look Up

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

The Worst Person in the World

Best Adapted Screenplay

Tight category with potential winners being CODA, Drive My Car, The Power of the Dog and The Lost Daughter. I think The Lost Daughter wins because it’s written by Maggie Gyllenhaal and she’s very popular and has campaigned hard for it. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s a woman and the Academy is shooting for a #GirlPower Oscars this year. If this goes to either CODA or The Power of the Dog that will pretty much indicate that movie will win Best Picture too.

CODA

Drive My Car

Dune

*The Lost Daughter

The Power of the Dog

Animated Feature

I’ve not seen any of these movies and really don’t care but everyone I know who has seen any of them raves about Encanto, so I think it wins here…but Flee is intriguing because it’s nominated in three categories, and maybe it’ll sneak out a win here or in documentary.

*Encanto

Flee

Luca

The Mitchells vs the Machines

Raya and the Last Dragon

Best International Feature Film

Drive My Car is the foreign film that has generated the most buzz for the longest period of time. I think it wins as its only real competition is The Worst Person in the World, but that movie seems to have gotten slow out of the gate and might not have enough time to catch up to Drive My Car, which I pick to win.

*Drive My Car

Flee

The Hand of God

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

The Worst Person in the World

Best Actor

The middling Will Smith is the odds-on favorite for his middling performance in the middling King Richard. I think he wins going away, but keep an eye out for a huge upset like we had last year with Anthony Hopkins beating out presumed winner Chadwick Boseman, as the middling Benedict Cumberbatch could sneak in there and shock the world with his equally middling performance as a middling gay cowboy in the middling The Power of the Dog.

Javier Bardem – Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield – Tick, Tick…Boom!

*Will Smith – King Richard

Denzel Washington – The Tragedy of MacBeth

Best Actress

Easily the toughest category of the night. I think Jessica Chastain, who has campaigned hard for the award, finally wins an Oscar. Olivia Colman has a legit chance to win, but since she already has an Oscar, I think it goes to Chastain. Outside chance that Penelope Cruz takes the prize.

*Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz – Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman – Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart – Spencer

Best Director

This is no contest as Jane Campion is going to win due to the identity politics of it all. I think The Power of the Dog is not a good movie, but to be fair, I don’t think any of these movies are great.

Kenneth Branagh – Belfast

Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Drive My Car

Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza

*Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg – West Side Story

Best Picture

Speaking of movies that aren’t great…ladies and gentleman, your 2021 Best Picture nominees!

Belfast

*CODA

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

 The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Yikes. Of these ten films, none of them are great, not even close. A few are ok, and a bunch are just plain shitty.

Both presumed front-runners, CODA and The Power of the Dog are bad movies. CODA is a joke as it’s basically a Hallmark Channel movie and it has no place being nominated. The Power of the Dog is over-rated, arthouse fool’s gold.

Belfast is a tame bit of maudlin movie-making, Don’t Look Up is a scattered diatribe, King Richard is the epitome of middle-brow mundanity, West Side Story is needless and lifeless.

Drive My Car and Dune are well made but deeply-flawed dramas. Licorice Pizza is a light romp from a brooding genius, and Nightmare Alley is a dazzlingly dark journey no one wants to take.

If this is the best the film industry has to offer, then something is catastrophically wrong with the film industry.

Regardless of all that, it seems to me that, as insane as it sounds, CODA, the worst, most amateurishly produced Oscar nominated film in living memory, is going to beat out The Power of the Dog, and win Best Picture.

 In ten years, no one will remember CODA. In five years, no one will remember CODA. In a year, no one will remember CODA. And by Monday morning, no one will remember these Academy Awards.

 Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

©2022

Oscar Nominations

The art and business of movies is in a dreadful state and the Oscars are in precipitous decline.

Hollywood got up bright and early this morning to hear who amongst them was nominated for an Academy Award. The rest of the world slept through the festivities, just like they will on March 27th when the actual awards are handed out.

‘The Power of the Dog’ was the big winner when it comes to nominations, garnering 12 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting actor and Best Supporting Actress.

2021 has been the worst year for movies that I can remember, so the vastly overrated, middling, pretentious mess that is the arthouse poseur ‘The Power of the Dog’ being nominated for a bevy of Oscars comes as no surprise, and says a great deal about the current sorry state of not only the moviemaking business but the art of cinema. It also says a great deal more about the insipid taste of the Academy than it does about the cinematic value of the movie.

Other big winners when it comes to Oscar nominations are ‘Dune’ with ten nominations and ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Belfast’ with seven nods each.

The general public rightfully had no interest in Steven Spielberg’s virtue signaling song and dance routine so ‘West Side Story’ has been a big box office bomb. But not surprisingly, the Academy Awards slobbered all over Spielberg and his tired remake nominating it for, among other categories, Best Picture and Best Director.

‘Belfast’, the rather benign and banal arthouse fool’s gold from Kenneth Branagh, snagged seven nominations as well, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Branagh himself.

Besides ‘The Power of the Dog’, ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Belfast’, the Best Picture category includes ‘King Richard’, ‘Licorice Pizza’, ‘Nightmare Alley’, ‘CODA’, ‘Don’t Look Up’, ‘Dune’ and ‘Drive My Car’.

This Best Picture lineup is, at best, a murderer’s row of mundane mediocrity, you’d be hard pressed to find even good movie among this lot, nevermind a great one.

‘King Richard’ is a mindless, middlebrow sports movie, ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a secondary effort from director P.T. Anderson, ‘Nightmare Alley’ is interesting but has been a dud at the box office and overlooked by critics, ‘CODA’ is basically a laughable amateurish Hallmark Channel movie, ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a scattered failure, ‘Dune’ is a cold but beautiful spectacle, and ‘Drive My Car’ is a Japanese film that virtually no one has seen.

As for the other categories, there will be lots of talk about who was snubbed. But the reality is that movies are so bad this year that you can’t really make a case that anyone got snubbed. For instance, Lady Gaga was awful in ‘The House of Gucci’, but that won’t stop her fans from bemoaning her lack of an acting nomination.

The other big story will be the alleged lack of diversity among the nominees. As always, there will be lots of manufactured outrage about how not enough people of color, minorities or artists from “marginalized groups” got recognized by the Academy.

For example, in the wake of the nomination being announced, the New York Times wrote an article “The Diversity of the Nominees Decreased” that lamented the omission of Jennifer Hudson and “her rousing performance as Aretha Franklin” in ‘Respect’ from the Best Actress category. That movie and Hudson’s performance in it were entirely forgettable, and of course, the Times doesn’t tell us who shouldn’t have been nominated instead of Hudson.

The NY Times does give a back handed compliment to the Academy for nominating Jane Campion and Ryusuku Hamaguchi in the Best Director category, which they say has been “historically dominated by white men”. That may be true, but also true is the fact that a in recent history a “white man” hasn’t won the award since Damien Chazelle in 2016, and only two “white men” have won the award in the last decade.

It's pretty clear that the “white men” nominated for Best Director this year, Kenneth Branagh for ‘Belfast’, P.T. Anderson for ‘Licorice Pizza’ and Steven Spielberg for ‘West Side Story’, need not show up for the awards because in the name of diversity there’s no way in hell they’re going to win.

Speaking of the slavish addiction to diversity over merit, for years now the Academy Awards have been slouching towards irrelevance, but it wasn’t until the #OscarsSoWhite protest gained traction after the Oscars committed the sin of nominating only white actors in every category in 2015 and 2016, that the Academy Awards went into hyperdrive on their march to oblivion.

The desperate need to appease the diversity gods has forced the Academy to expand its membership, both through adding more “minority” members and purging older white members. The result has been an Academy that has tarnished its brand, diminished the art of cinema, and lost its audience.

The ratings for the Oscar telecasts have been declining rapidly for years. In 2010, 41 million people watched the Oscar go to ‘The King’s Speech’. In 2021, just over 10 million people watched ‘Nomadland’ win the award.

The Oscar’s ratings for 2021 had dropped 56% from the previous year, and the ratings for this year’s ceremony will undoubtedly drop precipitously again.

The bottom line is that the Academy Awards are in a death spiral of irrelevance. Oscar’s demise is a symptom of the malignant malaise in moviemaking and the collapse of the art of cinema, and the truly atrocious line up of nominated films is undeniable proof of not only the Academy Award’s irrelevance but also the decrepit state of cinema.

 A version of this article was originally posted at RT.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

On this episode, Barry and I don our dance belts, flash our jazz hands and dance/fight over Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Topics discussed include pondering why on earth Spielberg would make this movie, Barry's resistance to Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and my brush with greatness starring Rita Moreno.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Being the Ricardos: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

West Side Story: A Review

****THIS FILM CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!! THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!! ****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

 My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The music is great (it’s West Side Story for goodness sakes!). The movie is not. If you’re a musical theatre nerd, then see it in the theatre. But if you’re ambivalent on musicals or are just a straight-up cinephile, you can skip it and wait to see it on streaming when it comes available.

 When I heard that Steven Spielberg was remaking the 1961 classic film musical West Side Story, I wondered why the most powerful director on earth would do such a trite thing.

Spielberg can make any movie he wants, so why, when no one was clamoring for a re-make, would he re-make a movie classic that is not in need of a re-make?

Having seen the movie, I still have no answer to that question, except maybe that Spielberg was looking for a film where he could most clearly signal his virtue in the hopes of getting an Oscar.

In 1961, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and famed choreographer Jerome Robbins, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Steven Sondheim, and starring the luminous Natalie Wood and the glorious Rita Moreno, captured America’s imagination as well as an astounding ten Academy Awards.

West Side Story, of course, tells the Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, who are caught between rival gangs of working class whites, the Jets, and Puerto Rican immigrants, the Sharks.

The 1961 film is great for its time, but it’s been labelled “problematic” by the modern politburo of political correctness due to its alleged stereotypical presentation of Puerto Ricans, including using make-up to darken the skin of actors, as well as committing the mortal sin of casting non-Latina Natalie Wood in the lead role of Maria, a Puerto Rican girl.

Spielberg’s remake keeps the story and setting the same, but in order to get maximum virtue signaling value he imposes a sort of meta update by projecting the woke politics of our current age onto the production as a way to ‘right the wrongs of cinema history’ or something.

For example, Spielberg boldly declared “the first thing I said was every single Shark, boy and girl, needs to come from the Latinx communities. And without fail.”  How courageous…and to use the term “Latinx”…bravo!

To prove his progressive bona fides, Spielberg also has numerous critical scenes in the film where only Spanish is spoken, but refuses to ever use subtitles in order to “not give English the power”. Again…these aren’t just throwaway scenes, they’re critical and if you don’t speak Spanish you have no clue what’s happening. This tactic dramatically undermines the film and ends up leaving Spanish-only speaking viewers confused half the time and English-only speaking viewers confused the other half.

Another piece of pathetic pandering is that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have turned the character Anybodys, which in the original was a tomboy on the fringe of the story, into a more featured character that is transgender. They even added scenes to beef up the trans aspects of Anybodys, including one where they/them beats up not only a group of Jets but also cops. Apparently in Spielberg’s 1950’s New York, trans people have super powers. And without giving anything away, I have to say, the final line of dialogue spoken to Anybodys in the movie is the absolute cringiest thing you’ll ever see….just atrociously awful in the most Spielbergian way.

The marketing campaign for West Side Story is astounding as everyday there’s a cavalcade of articles promoting how politically correct the production was, and how important and noble its representation, diversity and inclusion.

I saw a similar level of hype and woke self-congratulations earlier this year with the movie In the Heights, the musical film based on the Tony award musical by establishment darling Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of middlebrow juggernaut Hamilton.

In the Heights had a massive advertising blitz touting the movie’s diversity and ethnic storyline, and critics gushed over how important it was for diversity in film.

But then the narrative quickly turned as some wokesters complained that the cast of In the Heights didn’t have enough dark-skinned Latinos. So, the film that was supposed to be super woke ended up being derailed by wokeness. How poetic.

As a result of the controversy (and also because, despite critics adoration, it wasn’t any good), In the Heights bombed at the box office and faded into obscurity.

Spielberg’s pre-release pre-emptive defense will probably work, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some cracks already showing.

For instance, I saw an article titled, “Why can’t West Side Story just cast a Puerto Rican Maria?” in the Daily Beast. The writer is furious that Rachel Zegler, Maria in Spielberg’s film, is of Columbian and Polish descent and not from Puerto Rico.  

If you are a disciple of the religion of woke addicted to identity politics, then that argument holds a great deal of sway. Of course, it is egregiously restrictive artistically, but if those are the new rules of the game, then those are the new rules of the game.

The reality is that, in terms of actual identity, the Latino community is not a monolith, it’s a very diverse collection of very specific group identities (and of course within those group identities are very diverse people). Just like the Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish are very different and distinct people who don’t take kindly to being lumped together, the same is true for Puerto Ricans, who are not Columbians, who aren’t Mexicans, who aren’t Hondurans, who aren’t Panamanians, who aren’t Cubans, who aren’t Dominicans, who aren’t Puerto Ricans and on and on.

I tend to doubt this identity-based line of attack against West Side Story will gain much steam because Spielberg has the media so deep in his pocket. But with that said, there are other areas where the film could run afoul of the woke gatekeepers of the culture, most notably the fact that this story about minorities is being told by “straight white men” and that Ansel Elgort has been accused of sexual assault.

It will be fascinating to see if any of those “issues” derail the West Side Story train, and even if they don’t it will still be interesting to see how the film performs at the box office, as this year has been very cruel to movie musicals, as audiences have stayed away in droves. But this year’s movie musical failures, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and Tick, Tick…Boom are different from West Side Story in one very important way…Steven Spielberg didn’t direct them.

As for the merits of Spielberg’s West Side Story, it’s obvious he’s desperate for Oscar recognition, hence the virtue signaling, and that may work despite the fact that his movie is, at best, relentlessly mediocre. Something else in his favor is that this year has been an utter catastrophe for the art of cinema, so his competition is extraordinarily slim.

On the bright side, West Side Story is shot well by acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and has some interesting visual flair to it, but it isn’t all that different cinematically from the original.

Another thing going for it is…well…it’s West Side Story. The music is terrific, although many of the performances of those great songs leave a lot to be desired.

Also noteworthy is actress Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita. DuBose is a vibrant and dynamic screen presence. In every scene in which she appears, she is the radiant sun and everyone else orbits around her and is blinded by her luminosity.

DuBose’s rendition of “America” and Spielberg’s direction of that sequence, is easily the best thing in the movie. That musical number crackles with a visceral vibrancy that is undeniable and is a joy to behold, most especially because DuBose is like a supernova on-screen during the performance.

As for the rest of the cast, particularly leads Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony, they are unimpressive. Ziegler and Elgort specifically are anemic performers, like two black holes of anti-charisma.

Elgort’s Tony is supposed to have just gotten out of prison after nearly killing a kid in a rumble (a change by Kushner from the original story), but Elgort doesn’t look like a tough guy, in fact, he looks like someone whose dance card would’ve been pretty full in the prison showers.

That’s always been a big issue with West Side Story, either today or back in 1961, and that is that the actors playing the Jets and the Sharks gang members are about as menacing as a modern jazz dance troupe…because that’s what they are.

Speaking of which, the distinctive Jerome Robbins choreography, which borders on the hysterical in the original when the gangs dance/fight, has been altered or replaced in the new movie, but Robbins’ dance DNA is still present and, as great as it is – and it is great, it still made me chuckle at times.

In keeping with this painfully awful year in movies, West Side Story is a consistently unremarkable piece of cinema, but as an example of shameless self-promotion, virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s the bees knees.

The bottom line is that the last time Spielberg made a move with a shark in it, it turned out a hell of a lot better than this one.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

On this episode, Barry and I volley back and forth over the new Will Smith movie King Richard, which tells the story of Richard Williams, the father of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams. Topics discussed include the sorry state of cinema in the age of mediocrity, the perils of the biopic and the problem of Will Smith. Included is a brief bonus chat about the upcoming Spielberg movie West Side Story.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

Thanks for listening!

©2021

'In the Heights' and the Woke Albatross

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 34 seconds

The new movie musical ‘In the Heights’ is too woke for regular people and not woke enough for race-obsessed wokesters

The movie was relentless in marketing its diversity but is learning the hard way that you can never satiate the hunger of the woke beast.

In the Heights, the movie adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award winning musical about life in the Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City, was supposed to be ‘the movie of the summer!’

The film marketed itself as a “celebration” of diversity, and shamelessly boasted about its Latino writer (Miranda), Asian director (John Chu – Crazy Rich Asians) and all minority cast.

The film was aggressively marketed by Warner Bros., and was projected to rake in anywhere from $25 million to a staggering $50 million on its opening weekend, even though it was simultaneously being released on the streaming service HBO Max.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to blockbuster status… the movie embarrassingly underperformed. Despite rave reviews the movie made a measly $11 million and came in second at the box office to A Quiet Place II in its third week in theatres, it also fell flat on HBO Max.

Who would’ve thought that a rap-heavy musical that only has as its calling card its relentless diversity, and which features no stars but sells itself as the musical equivalent of a two hour and twenty-two-minute neo-liberal lecture on immigration and the DREAM Act, wouldn’t attract hordes of normal people to theatres or HBO Max?

Welcome to life in the Hollywood bubble.

The most hysterical thing about the In the Heights situation though is that in a delicious bit of irony, despite its supposed diversity bona fides, the film has come under attack from wokesters for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

During an interview Felice Leon of The Root challenged director Chu and cast members Melissa Barrera and Leslie Grace over the “white passing” and “light-skinned” cast and the lack of “black Latinx” actors in featured roles, and her criticism attracted much attention and support on Twitter and the media.

What makes this all so funny is that Lin Manuel Miranda, whose artistic talent at writing insipid raps and insidiously sappy tales is inversely proportionate to his over-sized ego, only became a cultural icon/pet of the establishment because he hungrily and wantonly embraced diversity, most notably with Hamilton.

The same is true of director John Chu, a filmmaker of gargantuan limitations whose only claim to fame is that he made a derivative rom-com (Crazy Rich Asians) but did it with an all-Asian cast.

With In the Heights, Warner Bros., Miranda and Chu were all trying to pander to the woke in order to line their pockets, and to see these proud politically correct poseurs squirm as they are hoisted by their own petard is, pardon the pun, in the heights of comedy.

As this glorious feast of woke cannibalism played out, Chu and Miranda both tried to assuage their attackers while barely concealing their own fury at being called before the tiny Torquemadas of Twitter as the newest woke inquisition raged.

Chu responded to the criticism by saying “…when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get people who were best for those roles…”. Uh-oh…that is a terribly “white” answer and sounds an awful lot like embracing meritocracy and not diversity.

Melissa Barrera, who plays Vanessa in the film, had an uncomfortably “white” answer to the lack of dark-skinned cast members too. Barrera said, “In the audition process, which was a long audition process, there were a lot of Afro-Latinos there. A lot of darker-skinned people. They were looking for just the right people for the roles, for the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent…”

I’m sure that Mr. Chu and Ms. Barrera’s newfound touting of meritocracy will quickly transform into a vigorous playing of the diversity card the second it works to their advantage.

As for the Patron Saint of Diversity, Lin Manuel Miranda, he originally replied to the uproar with a detached defiance saying, “it’s unfair to put any undue burden of representation on In the Heights”, which is woke-speak for ‘I am King of diversity how dare you question me?!’.

Of course, the mealy-mouthed Miranda, ever the craven eunuch, later changed his tune when the tide against him continued to rise, writing an embarrassing Twitter tome which started by his stating that he wrote In the Heights because he “didn’t feel seen” and ended with his tail firmly between his legs with, “I’m dedicated to the learning and evolving we all have to do to make sure we are honoring our diverse and vibrant community.”

The lessons in all of this In the Heights nonsense is two-fold. First, the film is “get woke, go broke” made manifest. Touting diversity instead of quality and entertainment as a main selling point for a movie, particularly a musical, is a sure-fire way to turn off regular people, particularly older ones, who are usually the audience for a movie musical.

Secondly, a business plan that puts placating the woke on the top of its list is doomed to fail. In the Heights is a corporate woke Frankenstein’s monster with its Latino writer, Asian director and all minority cast, and it still wasn’t enough for the woke. Nothing will ever be enough for the woke.

And if you like this ‘woke eating their own’ story about In the Heights…wait until December. That’s when the paleolithic woke pandersaurus himself - Steven Spielberg, premiers his remake of the Latino-themed musical West Side Story. It’s guaranteed to be ferventy woke but like In the Heights, not nearly woke enough to satiate the ever hungry woke beast.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021