Tag Archives: Joan Cusack

Giuliani Press Conference [11/19/20)

This is potentially the most important media event in the history of the United States of America.

https://www.oann.com/rudy-giuliani-and-trump-campaigns-legal-team-hold-press-conference/

Let’s use Google (please, no laughing yet…) to determine how “top” news organizations are covering a mass criminal conspiracy (if proven) which involved installing a losing candidate (Joe Biden) in the place of the candidate who actually won (Donald Trump).

That would be a big story, if true, right?

Let’s do a quick survey.

Because it’s the job of the news media to parse the one-hour-and-thirty-minute event and give American citizens an overview of its salient points.

Google search result for “giuliani press conference” videos page 1 (let’s presume a person might want to watch the whole thing for themselves):

–Result 1. Located on YouTube (owned, like Google, by Alphabet Inc. [how convenient]). Nine minutes. Key term: “hair dye”. Content: Jimmy Fallon

–Result 2. CNN. Two minutes and 42 seconds. Key term: “baseless claims”. Hey, CNN: do you treat all affidavits with such blanket dismissal?

–Result 3: Located on YouTube (part of Google conglomerate Alphabet Inc). Thirteen minutes and 51 seconds. Key term: “insane”. Content: Seth Meyers.

Let’s pause a moment.

Are we to assume that Google is impartially allowing the “most popular” results to rise to the top of their search here? We are presented with 2-out-of-3 results which directly benefit the search engine’s holding company (Alphabet) by way of a subsidiary (YouTube).

Sure, people like a good laugh.

But are comedy monologues usually the most popular when something as serious as a national criminal conspiracy comes to light?

To make fun of Rudy’s running hair dye is an ad hominem attack. Sure, it’s in good fun, right? But did Jimmy Fallon make fun of the room full of press who followed Rudy’s impassioned feat of logic with inane non sequiturs? I doubt it.

To characterize Rudy’s press conference as “insane” is to characterize Rudy himself as “insane”. This is, again, an ad hom attack which conveniently avoids addressing the event on any intellectual merit whatsoever.

Then, strangely, we have “news” wedged in between these two self-dealing redirects by Google. News in the form of CNN. What we appear to find is that, either A: CNN is the most popular news network in the USA (not true based on television ratings, financial solvency, etc.), or B: Google is pushing the views of a not-widely-popular network as being WILDLY-POPULAR.

Well, at least we can hope the title of said news coverage retains the appearance of impartiality.

Nope.

CNN’s video is titled, “Rudy Giuliani spouts baseless claims at news conference.”

Well, then.

That’s all we need to know, right?

Might as well not even watch it.

…the hour-and-a-half version, much less the 2′(!)42″ version.

CNN is really providing a service here.

They are thinking FOR US.

The video is just complementary.

The title says all you need to know.

There is no subtle shading.

It is black and white.

To CNN (at least), it is clear that Rudy Giuliani’s sworn affidavits are “baseless claims”.

How, I wonder, did CNN come to this conclusion?

Are they able to, point by point, refute each affidavit in a mere two minutes and 42 seconds?

Perhaps an auctioneer delivers the story using logic of which Bertrand Russell would even be proud?

But I doubt it.

And I won’t waste my time being burned again by CNN.

CNN is worse that the village idiot.

Because CNN is not unaware of what it is doing.

–Result 4: Ohhh…The Guardian. U.K. The king’s English. They talk in that proper, fastidious accent. Surely they will be measured and retrospect in their approach. Forty-three seconds. Key terms: “sweaty”, “hair malfunction”, “bizarre”. Right. As has been said recently, your opinion stopped mattering to us in 1776.

–Result 5: People magazine. One hour, 48 minutes, and 39 seconds (no less). Sounds promising. Key terms: “hair dye” and “sweat”. The title is already telling me what to think. It’s already telling me what to focus on. I don’t like that.

–Result 6: Newsweek. A whole whopping 26 SECONDS! Video title: “Tucker Carlson defends Rudy Giuliani”. God forbid…

–Result 7: Located on YouTube [where’s Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?]. The Young Turks. Eight minutes and 45 seconds. Key term: “literally melting down”. Again, ad hominem attack to cast aspersion on the facts presented.

Hey. Rudy is old. Lights can be hot. Lawyers have dropped off his team because THEIR LIVES HAVE BEEN THREATENED. Oh, and there’s this little thing called WORK. Work generates HEAT. A heated human body naturally SWEATS to cool itself down. When’s the last time you saw a “journalist” sweat?

Result 8: Sky News Australia. Surely the Aussies will offer a different take in their one minute 46 second video. Key term: “hair dye sweat”. Ok, maybe not.

Result 9: CNN. Again!!! Wow…they must really be popular. Let me guess: they give Rudy a fair shake here and, therefore, the video is lower rated by Google (and, you know, “we the people” who utilize this fair and balanced search engine)? Again, with CNN, the title says it all (no need even watching [apparently]): “CNN reporter debunks Giuliani’s dangerous and false claims.” Wow. So Pamela Brown (whoever the fuck that is) takes just four minutes (!) to refute an hour-and-a-half press conference from extremely literate speakers (not limited to Giuliani, but including lucid delineation by Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis).

So, let me get this straight: is the whole world (and particularly the United States [whose election has just been stolen by criminal conspiracy]) just a bunch of fart-joke-laughing middle schoolers who gleaned nothing from this masterpiece of oratory other than from the 10 minutes (out of NINETY MINUTES) where Rudy’s hair dye ran down the sides of his face?

I get it. Funny. Ha ha. That’s right. Let’s just discount the whole thing. Let’s discount “America’s Mayor” who saw us through the dark days of 9/11/01. Let’s just take a big dump on him. Let’s kick this prostate cancer survivor in the nuts because, God forbid, he uses hair dye. And, GOD FORBID, he sweats when he works.

For this audience:

a Rudy Giuliani fart is more literate–more articulate than a Joe Biden State of the Union address could ever be (God forbid the later actually happens).

Result 10: Located on YouTube [$]. Bloomberg. One hour, 48 minutes, and 39 seconds. Hmmm…same exact feed as People? Wow. That said, it’s the only result on page one which seems to even attempt taking Rudy as seriously as CNN takes the Green New Deal.

If you’re not much on videos, then read. This seems to be a fairly accurate transcript (though I have just browsed the top portion [after having watched the entire press conference]).

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rudy-giuliani-trump-campaign-press-conference-transcript-november-19-election-fraud-claims

I believe the three people who spoke (Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis) will go down in American history as heroes for what they did today. And so will those working in the shadows (like Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing).

This is the most epic break in the matrix (or Debord’s “spectacle”, whichever you prefer) in modern American history. It will be remembered that it all started here.

-PD

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Sixteen Candles [1984)

If you don’t believe John Hughes was a genius, see this film.

Seriously.

Because I didn’t believe.

Though Hughes made one of my favorite 1980s comedies (Planes, Trains and Automobiles), I didn’t really get it.

It being the John Hughes phenomenon.

While the cool kids had it figured out long ago, I was too contrarian to listen.

Now I get it.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is truly a special film, but Sixteen Candles is transcendent art.

Don’t laugh.

What would André Bazin make of this film?  Or Gilles Deleuze?  Or Christian Metz?

Who cares???

Well, I care…

But what’s important is what YOU make of it.

And in this case, what I make of it.

But let’s get one thing straight:  Molly Ringwald invented the archetype which Thora Birch and Kat Dennings would later appropriate in doubtless homage.

Which is to say, Molly Ringwald is otherworldly as an actress in this film.

It’s no wonder Jean-Luc Godard cast her in his wonderful, underrated, masterful version of King Lear (1987).

Quentin Tarantino famously claimed (à la Bob Dylan’s conflated biography circa-1962) that he was in King Lear, but Molly Ringwald was ACTUALLY in it.

But enough about QT and nix on the digressions.

So no, I am no Henri Langlois to claim that Sixteen Candles should be in MoMA’s permanent collection, but there is good reason to compare this film favorably to Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings of 1939.

But none of this shit really matters.

What matters is the part in Gedde Watanabe’s hair at the dinner table.

And even more so (big time)–> is the indescribable Anthony Michael Hall.

AT&T gets it.  Which means the seemingly wonderful Milana Vayntrub ostensibly gets it.

But I’m not sure the understanding flows both ways.

Because America has changed.

We are much closer to the year 1984 (as opposed to Orwell’s 1984) here in late-2016 than to any other period of American experience.

Yeah, Michael Schoeffling could only come from the Reagan era.

But he’s a great guy.  And a fine actor.

And Sixteen Candles teaches us a lot of stuff.

John Hughes, as a film philosopher, is precocious in his grasp of American society in the 1980s.

The outcast wins.

But the conservative wins too.

Really, everybody wins.

That’s what value-creation will do.

But let’s back to A.M. Hall.  This bloke…

What a performance!

And the real chemistry in this film is between Ringwald and Hall.

In the auto body shop.

And so what do we get?

Romance.  Misery.  And tons of fucking jokes.

We must congratulate John Hughes as much for his writing as his direction.

The previous year he had written National Lampoon’s Vacation starring Chevy Chase.

Years later he’d write a stellar reboot for the series in Christmas Vacation (also starring Chase).

You want more movies Hughes wrote but didn’t direct?  How about Home Alone? [check] Or Pretty in Pink (starring Ringwald)?  [check]

But let’s get another thing straight:  this was John Hughes’ fucking DIRECTORIAL DEBUT!!!

But none of this shit matters.

What matters is Molly Ringwald crying in the hallway.

What matters is Molly practicing her potential lines before reentering the dance.

Molly talking on the phone with the Squeeze poster on the wall.

Molly freaking out and taking flight over fight.

And immediate regret.

What films do this?

Perhaps in 1955 we would have looked at Rebel Without a Cause in a similar way.

And rightly so.

Sixteen Candles is its progeny of uncertain admixture.

Looking through the yearbook.

And seeing the one.

The one who burns in your heart.

In America, this is realism (couched in slapstick and screwball).

Molly Ringwald is the loser who wins.

And Anthony Michael Hall is the hopeless dweeb who also wins…by sheer force of will.

There are genuine moments of panic in this film (as soft as they might be) regarding missed communication.  Telephone calls.  House calls.

And it adds just the right touch of anxiety to keep this film catalyzed and moving along.

But what makes all this believable?  The supporting cast.

John and Joan Cusack (especially Joan, whose life make’s Ringwald’s look like a bed of roses).  And John’s future MIT roommate (it would seem) Darren Harris.

But there’s one of the crew which deserves a little extra credit…and that is music supervisor Jimmy Iovine.

The tunes are right.  The attention to detail is solid.

Sound and image merge (as Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller had impressed upon Godard that they should) into sonimage (a word Godard would use for his production company Sonimage).

Even the cassette spitting unspooling tape onto the pizza turntable is perfect.

The cassette?  Fear of Music by Talking Heads.

Yes, Brian Eno.

And yes, “Young Americans” as they leave the driveway on the way to the wedding before the famous “au-to-mo-bile” scene.

David Bowie.

Even The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra doing Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor…briefly. [which lets our minds drift to Chaplin’s The Great Dictator]

Everything is right sonically.

The band instruments on the school bus.

The Dragnet quotes.

The gongs for Long Duk Dong.

“Lenny” by SRV in the car.  Half a car.

It’s so very sweet.  And sotto voce.  And real.

It’s a mix.  It doesn’t intrude.  You gotta unlock the passenger door to your heart to let this film in.

And a little Billy Idol as Anthony Michael Hall negotiates a Rolls Royce and a prom queen.

So rest in peace, John Hughes.  And thank you for this film.

Et je vous salue, Molly!  Merci for the film.

And thank you Anthony Michael Hall for capturing my youth and bottling it up.

Thank you Molly for capturing the one I loved and bottling up all the quirky, quixotic things which I cannot see anymore.

It is the immortality principle of film.

John, Molly, and Anthony…three geniuses of film.

I am profoundly grateful.

-PD

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Charlie Bartlett [2007)

There is a battle on between history and life.  And one of those battlegrounds is at the movies.  It is a storied fight between the little punk shit Bob Dylan and bearded, august Johannes Brahms.  1955 brought us Rebel Without a Cause which displayed what is truly at issue.  Can a piece of art (an artifact) speak to teenagers and still be timeless?  The history of cinema has proven the answer to be a resounding “yes.”

Nicholas Ray was one of the directors most admired by the French New Wave…particularly by Jean-Luc Godard.  Wim Wenders would celebrate the brave auteur as he passed from one world to the next in Lightening Over Water (1980).  But what is most enduring is the spirit Ray and other prescient filmmakers evinced–that spirit which lived on in John Hughes’ cult film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986).

That brings me to the film in question.  When I first saw Charlie Bartlett I had a pretty unspectacular life.  I had just seen Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and fallen in love with Kat Dennings.  I had to see more.  I even went so far as to buy The House Bunny as a new release…just to get a few more minutes of this enigmatic actress.  Now that I have blown whatever street cred I had remaining as a film critic, I might as well fess up to having done a similar thing when I fell in love with Thora Birch after seeing Ghost World.  Yes, I forked out to buy Dungeons & Dragons (2000) on VHS.  Yikes!

When I first saw Charlie Bartlett, the teenage drama-comedy genre conventions struck me as mostly trite and hackneyed.  In a word:  hollow.  But my reappraisal of this film couldn’t be more different from my first impression.

The world of art films tends to speak its own cinematic language on screen.  At times, the overly-precious, self-conscious products come off as caricatures of better films.  In Ghost World, a classic awaiting its proper place in film history, Terry Zwigoff perfectly frames this empty art film posturing by referring to a nonexistent picture called The Flower That Drank the Moon.  It sums up the disconnect between the world of Cannes and the world at large.  Want to see Godard’s new film Adieu au langage at your local movie theater?  Good luck!

And so my assertion is this:  Charlie Bartlett is a masterpiece.  Is it as good as Ghost World?  No.  Is it as good as Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist?  Not to these eyes.  But is it a classic which got swept unjustly into DVD cut-out bins?  Yes.  And here’s why.

Jon Poll kept a million pieces in balance.  His direction, while not perfect, should be commended with the highest accolades.  The screenplay by Gustin Nash goes a long way towards giving this film in a daunting genre a chance at being timeless.  The fact that the movie grossed just under half of its budget (a $6 million loss) should be welcomed by MGM as a blessing.  This film will be reborn in the history yet to be written.

Hope Davis gives a nuanced, touching performance as Charlie’s mother.  Anton Yelchin, as Charlie, is beyond fantastic.  It is a performance which requires multiple viewings to appreciate.  Robert Downey, Jr. gives a real piece of his soul to this film which was unjustly overlooked by the world.  Tyler Hilton manages to channel Adam Baldwin from another criminally underrated flick My Bodyguard (which just happened to feature Joan Cusack’s first substantive role).

Kat Dennings is remarkably good at such a young age.  She manages to cheer the hearts of all of us who perhaps identify a little too much with Kip Crombwell (Mark Rendall).  Rendall is shockingly adept in his miniscule role.

Perhaps the funniest aspect of this review is that I am clinging lustily to a piece of nicotine gum as I write this.  That’s just how life works.  Though it only figures into Charlie Bartlett as a mini-MacGuffin, it sets up a pivotal scene.  But nothing measures up to Downey and Yelchin by the poolside.  What to do when life has gone to shit…  A single father losing his teenage daughter…  The overtones are almost right out of Knut Hamsun (though the subject matter be unrecognizably morphed).

Substance abuse is at the forefront of this film, yet it is alcohol which finally precipitates a climax.  The emotional lift is brought via Dennings singing a song in the school play.  It is delicate and honest.  We have been made to relate to Downey’s struggle to find himself.  He just wasn’t cut out to play “bad cop.”  And that is the overarching crux:  the bad cop (Downey) jealous of the good cop (Charlie).  The wrong career can destroy you…and it does so from the inside out.  It’s not worth the extra money.

But the most important role (and element) of this entire film?  Dylan Taylor as Len Arbuckle.  You see, Charlie rides the short bus to school.  Bartlett is seemingly oblivious to the differences between the mentally and physically challenged and himself.  Peas and carrots.  Charlie Bartlett has a good heart…and an angel notices.

-PD

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