Courage is contagious.
Dennis Quaid hit the publicity trail for “Reagan” a few months back, never hiding the fact that he supports Donald Trump in the November election. It’s the kind of statement that can stop a career cold, even when the star in question has decades of audience goodwill — as Quaid has.
Now it’s Zachary Levi’s turn.
The “Chuck” and “Shazam!” star just threw his support behind Trump at a Reclaim America tour. He did so with grace and patience, making sure not to attack or alienate those who disagree with his presidential choice.
Call him the anti-De Niro.
Will he pay a price for his decision? Perhaps. He noted that possibility in his comments. If enough Hollywood Trump supporters stand up, there’ll be too many to cancel.
Was it something Billie Joe Armstrong said?
The Green Day lead singer is in hot water for dissing Sin City from a concert stage.
“We don’t take [expletive] from people like [expletive] John Fisher. ... I hate Las Vegas. It’s the worst [expletive] in America."
Did he not see the fountains of the Bellagio? C’mon!
Fisher owns the Oakland Athletics, the baseball franchise picking up stakes and moving to Vegas next season. That apparently got the attention of two Vegas radio stations, which pulled Green Day music from their lineup.
It’s either a silly radio stunt or a sign that the left’s snowflake sensibilities are spreading.
Either way, Green Day shouldn’t be too sore about it. The band indirectly supports censorship via its pro-Democrat posturing. Should the Harris-Walz ticket win come November, radio station bans will seem quaint by comparison.
Elections have consequences. So do presidential endorsements. We’ve already seen Taylor Swift’s brand take a hit following her Kamala Harris embrace. Now we’re learning that Netflix got jolted after its CEO wrote a $7 million check to the Harris ticket.
Netflix subscribers left in droves after Reed Hastings’ move went public. The ensuing cancellations nearly tripled in the U.S. following the announcement.
Maybe Netflix can do some damage control by endorsing a “Tiger King” sequel? Joe Exotic is tan, rested, and ready ... assuming you can sneak cameras into his jail cell.
If you’re gonna burn bridges, you might as well bring all the gasoline.
“Sopranos” alum Drea de Matteo is taking that message to heart. The veteran actress keeps trashing her Hollywood peers as part of an ongoing media tour.
Why? She has no new TV show or movie to promote. She’s just mad as hell, and she’s not gonna take it any more. She’s a former liberal who swallowed the whole red pill in recent months. That explains why she skewered celebrity culture during a no-holds-barred chat with Fox Business.
“I think the American dream is on hold. I feel like Hollywood is dead. The music industry is dead.”
“There’s no cultural, artistic movements speaking out about [modern life]. ... You don’t see fine art — there’s usually protest art about wars and censorship. And we’re stagnant right now.”
The anti-war arts movement is MIA, no doubt. The only rebellious art is coming from the conservative counterculture. Think Five Times August's Fauci-skewering “Sad Little Man” and Five for Fighting's poignant anti-Hamas ballad “OK (We Are Not OK)."
Is this any way to treat a legend?
Clint Eastwood’s new film, “Juror #2,” has been shrouded in secrecy for some time. Now, finally, we have a trailer. Will the movie be released as part of an awards season push? By all appearances, no. World of Reel reports it's set for a limited release on Nov. 1 with no plans for an expansion.
Yet.
Eastwood, 94, has suggested that this will be the last film of his iconic career. His previous effort, 2021’s “Cry Macho,” proved underwhelming. And that’s being gracious.
“Juror #2” offers a solid cast (Nicholas Hoult, J.K. Simmons, Toni Collette, and Kiefer Sutherland) and a feisty premise. A juror in a murder trial realizes the critical role he played in the case before him and how his future could be tied to the verdict.
If anyone deserves to ride off into the cinematic sunset with one final winner, it’s Clint Eastwood.
Damon Packard is the Los Angeles-based filmmaker behind such underground classics as “Reflections of Evil,” “The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary,” “Foxfur,” and “Fatal Pulse.” His AI-generated work recently appeared as interstitials for the 18th annual American Cinematheque Horrorthon and can be enjoyed on his YouTube channel. After a long day making movies or otherwise making ends meet, he likes to unwind with late-night excursions to the multiplexes and art house cinemas of greater Los Angeles. For previous installments of the "Diary," see here.
Wobbled into an 11 p.m. show of "Am I Racist?" last night in Century City. As seemingly ripe as this subject matter is for satire, I found it mostly dull and not all that funny.
What struck me is how oddly staged the whole thing felt. These bizarre DEI, white privilege education workshops can't possibly be real, can they? People actually pay that kind of money to attend them? These people are real?
Anyone who still has some brain function knows how ridiculous and reality-manipulating the whole woke thing is — like any mainstream media-driven profiteering scam the dopey brain-dead masses fall for (take your pick, the world revolves around trillions of scams within scams).
So it's all about finding clever and humorous ways to point out the obvious hypocrisies and broken logic.
Walsh is no Borat, Eric Andre, Chris Morris, or Louis Theroux. This kind of humor is tricky, and it takes someone of unique charisma.
Heading into a nice, completely empty midnight show of this "Beetlejuice" stuff. Perfect night. Everyone wiped out from the heat, this whole place is quiet and empty. Will report back but I can't imagine I'll have anything of interest to say.
[Later]
"Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" was weird. It included some really odd needle drops — the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" (which reappears in the climax in the form of Danny Elfman's orchestral version). Strangest of all was the use of Pino Donaggio's "Carrie" theme at the end.
I wonder if this was just music Burton happened to be listening to while making or cutting the movie. It was nice hearing these pieces in a theater, but do those songs really work for the scene? Eh.
I think Burton is probably an insightful, intelligent person with whom I'd enjoy discussing art, cinema, history, old Hollywood, etc. But for me his films range from mediocre to baffling to awful.
I just don't know what the hell to make of this thing. Danny DeVito frothing at the mouth as a disgusting dead janitor? Too much goofy, cartoony weirdness for this to work for me. And for a guy who loves stop motion, Burton includes some pretty mediocre stop-motion sequences here.
Maybe if I were feeling generous I'd give it a semi-pass — who else is giving Catherine O'Hara lead roles these days?
Watched "Tightrope" (1984) last night at a friend's house. I remember well when this played at the Mann National Westwood. Some have described it as Eastwood's "giallo." It's certainly very stylish, dark, sleazy, and moody and often feels more like a slasher movie than a thriller.
I did wonder if this was originally intended for another actor. Eastwood plays a divorced police detective named Wes Block, who is raising two daughters and five dogs. He also loves to have kinky sex with hookers while on the job. At one point he tells Geneviève Bujold he'd "love to lick the sweat off" her body, which you almost can't believe he just said.
At the time, Gene Siskel praised Eastwood for "risking his star charisma [to play] a louse." The villain is a sadistic psycho killer who creeps around stalking women in bizarre devil masks; he ends up beating and possibly raping Block's daughter. Eastwood cast his own 12-year-old daughter Alison in the role.
I did not expect to get through this, but somehow I watched this entire thing. Andrew McCarthy (whom I've always liked for his charming, neurotic quirkiness) did a good job.
At the same time I can't believe he actually had the gall to make an entire movie griping about his career.
Let's see: The world is collapsing in chaos, the starving masses swarm the streets like something out of "Soylent Green," and here comes poor Andrew McCarthy with a 90-minute, soul-searching documentary about how hard it was on him and his rich, beautiful celebrity friends when an article in New York magazine called them the "Brat Pack."
CineFile screening nights continued tonight with James Glickenhaus' spectacular overlooked 1988 action thriller/courtroom drama "Shakedown." Modern, CGI-heavy action movies with bloated $200 million budgets can't even come close to what Glickenhaus could do with $6 million in 1987.
Nowadays you probably wouldn't even be allowed to attempt some of the stunts they pull off. It's a reminder of how competitive the field was at the time. Stuntmen were eager to keep pushing boundaries and would take major risks, especially in small-budget films. You can also notice this in many of the Hong Kong films of the era.
Needless to say, those days are over. Glickenhaus wisely got out of the film biz and now runs a company that makes high-performance race cars.
Finally, someone else doing something somewhat creative with AI, showing the true faces of these ridiculous politicians, technocrats, and leaders.
That's exactly what all these idiots on the world's stage are: a bunch of gangsters, rubbing it in our faces like James Cagney with that grapefruit in "The Public Enemy."
A 3 a.m., Uber Eats delivery dragged me all the way out to Canoga Park on Topanga Canyon Blvd. (I made $20 for the whole night; sad, I know.)
I did get to revisit the former site of a movie theater from my youth, the Baronet: a huge, 500-seat auditorium with sticky floors. I remember seeing both "Damien: Omen 2" and "The Awakening" here at nearly empty showings in the early '80s when I lived in Chatsworth. It closed around 1986.
This isn't too far from the Topanga Twin Cinema, where I sat through "An American Werewolf in London" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" twice in a row in 1981. I believe it's a Crate & Barrel now.
This is one of most fascinating films I've ever seen. I watched the entire thing this morning, completely mesmerized.
This was supposed to be a Roman Polanski project, but he ended up handing over directing duties to Simon Hesera. Polanski is credited only as writer and second unit director.
But this strange, dream-like tale of miserable, angry characters on a rainy and cold beachfront is so artfully done that I suspect it's very much a Polanski film — much in the same way that "Poltergeist" was clearly directed by Steven Spielberg, despite being credited to Tobe Hooper.
I'm surprised it's been so overlooked for so many years. It sticks with you.
You may have notice that Clint Eastwood — the iconic 91-year-old actor and director who's still going strong — was put on blast this week by a left-wing activist who called out Eastwood for a joke he uttered at the Academy Awards
The 1973 Academy Awards, to be exact.
Yup, it seems progressive blue-check activist Rafael Shimunov tried cashing in his cancel culture chips by rewinding the tape and letting all his 50,000-plus Twitter followers know that Eastwood "mocked" a Native American actress at the gala event 48 years ago.
Actor Marlon Brando made headlines refusing to accept his Best Actor Oscar for his work in "The Godfather" — Brando didn't even show up — and having Sacheen Littlefeather speak out in his place regarding treatment of Native Americans in Hollywood.
Littlefeather told the crowd that Brando "very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry."
With that the audience members began to murmur before a number of them booed while others clapped: "Excuse me," Littlefeather told the crowd before it quieted down and she continued.
"And on television, in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee," she added. "I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will, in the future — our hearts and our understandings — will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando."
The cameras soon turned to Eastwood — known at the time for his roles in the "Dirty Harry" movies as well as numerous westerns such as "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" — so he could present the award. And he made a joke.
"I don't know if I should present this award, on behalf of all the cowboys shot in all the John Ford Westerns over the years," Eastwood said to mild chuckles.
1973: Native American actor Sacheen Littlefeather boo'd (and cheered) by Hollywood at the Oscars before being mocke… https://t.co/6uxPMjoA4f
— raf (@rafaelshimunov) 1633962563.0
Well, as you might expect there were a fair number of commenters who agreed with Shimunov's sentiments, but others found it petty and ridiculous that he went back nearly 50 years to make a case against Eastwood:
Given the degree to which Eastwood is revered and lauded by left-wing Hollywood — and that actors, producers, screenwriters, and movie studios have been jumping at the chance to work with him for the last 30 years since he's been on the director's chair — it seems unlikely that woke power brokers in Tinseltown are going to light their torches and go after Eastwood any time soon.
The movie is a reminder of what really matters in life, that good things can happen to good people, and that we can take heart in this.
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