Hollywood’s Inability To Create Masculine Stars Is Officially A Problem
Please stop trying to make Pedro Pascal happen; he's not going to happen.Please stop trying to make Pedro Pascal happen; he's not going to happen.Mission: Impossible (to sit through); Final Dud-stination; RIP Joe Don Baker
Damon Packard's movie diary
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 has 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.
May 23, "Muppets from Space" (1999, d. Tim Hill ), Nuart Theatre
Nice and empty 10:30 p.m. show of "Muppets from Space" (1999) tonight at the Nuart. Can't remember if I ever saw this.
It was cute, but nothing compares to the first three Muppet movies. Would've far preferred if they screened the second or third film rather than the millennial-era nostalgia. A time I find nothing to be nostalgic about.
May 23, "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" (d. Christopher McQuarrie), AMC Burbank 16
Heading into a nice and semi-empty 1:30 a.m. show (yes, you read that right — 1:30 a.m.!) of this "Mission Impossible" junk right now in Burbank. Actually you'd be amazed how many people are here. And this thing is three hours.
Update, three hours later: Good grief, that was awful. Felt like a teaser trailer padded out to three hours, yet still not even enough interesting material for a teaser trailer.
Well, not even enough for a zero-second trailer, since there was nothing interesting about any of it. Some ridiculous, convoluted, overlong plot about an "entity" and various key chips in between obligatory bomb-defusing scenes and close-ups of Cruise looking intense.
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The group dialogue/over-exposition scenes are so ridiculous. They do that a lot in big blockbusters. They must have some contract clause that requires or allows each actor a certain number of lines or something so they all take turns. It's like a Zucker/Abrahams parody, but then reality itself is a Zucker/Abrahams parody now.
Mission Tedium.
May 19, "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997, d. Roger Spottiswoode), CineFile Video Movie Rental
Secret midnight screening of "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997) at CineFile last night.
We felt an urge to revisit some Bonds lately.
This was one I remember hating when I first saw it in '97, but time has been kinder even to the late '90s (when things were really getting bad, only to get even worse later).
While not as good as "Octopussy" and "Living Daylights" — the final vestiges of the era of director John Glen, composer John Barry, and title designer Maurice Binder — Roger Spottiswoode's outing prides itself on not giving you any time to breathe in between every whiz-bang, over-the-top action scene of gasoline pyro and zirc hits.
Zirc hits, in case you didn't know, are .68 caliber paintballs filled with zirconium powder and fired from an air gun to create the "sparking" effect of a bullet hitting metal or another hard surface.
For non-sparking impact effects — a bullet hitting the dirt, for example — paintballs filled with colored dust (dust hits) are used.
This paintball method is much easier than pre-wiring explosions (squibs) on the impact surface, so it became more and more popular, to the point of being overused in many action movies (especially by the '90s).
Even though cheap-looking CGI is ruining everything, productions still use practical zirc hits for gun battles.
Another thing you notice in "Tomorrow Never Dies" is the use of gasoline-charged "fireball"-type explosions — safer and more controllable than the more dangerous, and sometimes more realistic, forms of pyro used in the '70s, when they were breaking all the rules and didn't have as many restrictions or regulations in place.
Take the famous stunt in which a helicopter tilts almost 45 degrees so that its rotors trap Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) in an alley. If they wanted to do that in the '70s, some crazy, gung-ho pilot probably would have offered to risk doing it for real back then.
Good to see Joe Don Baker (who died May 7) reprise his "Goldeneye" role as CIA agent Jack Wade ("Yo, Jimbo!"). He also played arms dealer Brad Whitaker (the first American Bond villain) in the 1987 Timothy Dalton-era installment "The Living Daylights."
Music-wise, David Arnold does a pretty decent job capturing the feel of John Barry's scores, but still the Barry magic is gone.
Fun film, but for me the beginning of a decline from "shaken, not stirred" to "shake in a turbo blender until you're dizzy" to the "fizzed, flattened, and rebranded" era of today.
"Tomorrow Never Dies" director Roger Spottiswoode ("Terror Train") is not only still alive but was still working until a few years ago.
I always thought of him as a kind of "hired hand" industry guy; then again, "Under Fire" (1983 movie starring Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman as foreign correspondents in Nicaragua) still stands as a terrific film. And Spottiswoode seems like terrific guy, part of that generation when directors were not only humble, intelligent, and gracious but good communicators.
May 17, "Bronsploitation" (d. Mike Malloy)
I feel bad it's taken me a few days to share this preview clip of writer/director Mike Malloy's very cool-looking upcoming documentary "Bronsploitation," about three men who have built careers in showbiz based on their resemblances to Charles Bronson.
Malloy and Eric Zaldivar (who also worked on "Bronsploitation") are two of the coolest cats out there doing interesting work. If they were around in the '70s, they'd probably be making solid highbrow exploitation films (something only Quentin Tarantino seems to have success with these days) instead of nostalgic documentaries about the era. I hope we can collaborate some day on some original work.
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May 16, "Friendship" (d. Andrew DeYoung), AMC Burbank 16
Well, looks like It's an 11 p.m. of "Friendship" in Burbank tonight.
Update (hours later): Ooof! Awful. Sheer tedium. Didn't care for it at all. Just awkward strangeness with no purpose. P.T. Anderson it ain't. The woman who played his wife, though, was beautiful.
May 15, "Final Destination: Bloodlines" (d. Zach Lipovsky, Adam Stein), AMC Century City 15
I guess it's an 11 p.m. of this "Final Destination" garbage tonight, in theater ... 13. (Gulp.) Only because I woke too late after a nap and there's no other choice.
Update: I don't know who the audience is for these movies.
People just like seeing other people mutilated and killed, but if so much as a single animal gets fake-harmed or killed, they go completely insane. Why? Because humans hate other humans. Animals give the unbiased, unconditional love to humans that humans can't give to each other.
Well ... cute, domesticated animals do. See what happens if you find yourself alone in a remote forest and are surrounded by hungry tigers, bears, or coyotes.
May 15 (earlier)
RIP Joe Don Baker, my kind of folk.
May 13, "Fatal Pulse" (2018, d. Damon Packard), CineFile Video
Tonight is a screening of my yuppie fear thriller "Fatal Pulse" at CineFile Video.
This one never got many public screenings, though it did have a nice Egyptian premiere in 2018 before falling back into the oblivion zone. I'm sure all of two people will be there.
Then again, the CineFile Micro-Cinema has gotten some big press lately with the upcoming unauthorized "Batman Forever" Schumacher Cut screening on May 29 [ed. note: Canceled May 25 after cease-and-desist notice from Warner Bros.], which the cine-hipsters are losing their minds over.
We screened it privately over a year ago, and I enjoyed it, though did run a tad long. An improvement over the original release, as one can see a degree of Schumacher's ambition in creating this vast, crazy, cartoony comic-strip world of massive set pieces. All mostly set to Elliot Goldenthal's "Interview with the Vampire" score, as his new score was not ready at the time of the edit.
Anyhow, expect insane cine-hipster riots that night when they all show up to find out the place only has 20 seats. Much like the "New Jack City" riot in "Fatal Pulse" (based on real events in Westwood in 1991, when crowds couldn't get into that film).
Prepare for total chaos.
Update: A full house (surprisingly).
Kiss off: Pedro Pascal latest celebrity scold to dump on America
Pedro Pascal is no dummy.
“The Last of Us” actor is having a moment, which means he appears in one out of every five movies or TV shows. We exaggerate but only a little.
Those Tom Cruise stunts are getting more and more dangerous. What next — cabin boy on another 'ladies who launch' Blue Origin flight?
So the star of “Eddington”/”The Fantastic Four”/”Gladiator II”/”Freaky Tales”/”Materialists” is doing what “it actors” do when the spotlight arrives. He’s vomiting out every pet cause he can find.
That doesn’t mean denouncing anti-Semitism or decrying how the Democrats hid a dementia patient from the nation. Oh, no. Pascal is pushing the trans agenda, attacking J.K. Rowling, and, now, promoting Planned Parenthood.
The actor was one of several “names” to sign an open letter supporting the pro-abortion group this week. Oh, and he’s cursing out President Donald Trump.
It’s as if he saw the flaming wreckage of former “it actress” Rachel Zegler and said, “Hold my career" ...
Who's next
You know woke is in retreat when Disney waves the white flag on the subject. The Mouse House has dialed back its progressive propaganda of late, witnessing apolitical smashes like “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2,” and, now, the live-action “Lilo & Stitch.”
The folks behind “Doctor Who” haven’t gotten that message, apparently. The British sci-fi favorite can’t give up the woke, and it’s costing the show dearly where it counts.
The ratings.
The far-left Deadline.com noted that it’s impossible to deny the show’s viewership has sunk, badly, in recent months.
Meanwhile, the players in the “Who”niverse are giddy at its woke transformation. Co-star Varada Sethu said the naysayers are just proof that the inclusivity is working.
Showrunner Russell T. Davies said last month he “has no time” for any fans unhappy with the new direction. If the series’ ratings droop any more, he might have plenty of time on his hands ...
Cruise faces 'Reckoning' at box office
The "last movie star" could use your help.
Tom Cruise stands virtually alone in Hollywood today. He’s unfailingly polite, positive, and apolitical. He spends as much time thanking audiences for seeing his films as shooting them. And of course, he does as many stunts as a studio’s insurance agents will allow.
And it’s not enough this time.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is on track for a $65 million opening this weekend. That’s solid for most films but not one with a reported $400 million price tag. The eighth and perhaps final film in the saga will need a miracle to recoup its costs.
The worse news? The summer movie season is here, and the competition only gets stiffer in the coming weeks.
Besides, those Tom Cruise stunts are getting more and more dangerous. If this flick flops, who knows what extremes he'll go to next time — cabin boy on another "ladies who launch" Blue Origin flight?
Same old Variety
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Actor Zachary Levi is back, and he’s trying to bring Hollywood to Texas. The “Chuck” alum is plotting a movie studio to be built in Austin, a chance to steal Los Angeles’ thunder. That’s the newsy part of this Variety profile.
The crazy part? Both Levi and Variety admit the star’s right-leaning views have damaged his Hollywood career. It’s the latest installment of the Hollywood blacklist 2.0, where right-leaning artists have to watch what they say ... or else.
Naturally, an august publication like Variety just shrugs it off.
Remember that the next time it publishes another “Trump Is a Fascist” article. Its scribes don’t actually know what the word means. Or care ...
U2, Bono?
Better late than never?
U2’s Bono was one of the very few musicians to speak out immediately after Oct. 7, particularly citing the Nova music festival attacked by Hamas barbarians. He’s been mostly quiet since then on the subject, while bolder voices like Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik have taken up the cause on a near-daily basis.
Now, Bono is back, and he’s finally saying what every musician on the planet should have demanded from the jump.
The lead singer is also demanding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resign, perhaps as an attempt to “both sides” the matter.
Either way, it would have been nice if the Irish superstar has used his celebrity clout over the past year. His comments are still better than the near silence from the rest of his community.
How Tom Cruise tricked Hollywood studios into restarting production during COVID lockdowns
Tom Cruise revealed that a game of phone tag and some old-school Hollywood finesse got the city back in the swing of production during COVID-19 shutdowns.
Cruise gave an exclusive interview to "The Pat McAfee Show" on Wednesday ahead of the premiere of "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning," the eighth movie in the franchise that has spanned 29 years.
'I don't take no for an answer, really.'
Host Pat McAfee asked Cruise if he felt the weight of the movie industry on his shoulders during COVID-19 shutdowns. Hollywood came to screeching halt in March 2020 and did not resume filming until June, and even then only with heavy restrictions. Cruise is widely credited for getting the industry moving again that summer.
"Yeah, I did," Cruise replied. "It's not just about the films I'm making. The difference in movies and other sports is I've never felt competitive with other people. I'm like, 'I want everyone to do well.'"
Cruise explained that while productions were firmly shut down, he had a conversation with his lead producer and said they needed to figure out how to get the cameras rolling.
After the producer agreed, Cruise then pulled off one of the greatest Hollywood capers of all time.
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Cruise went to into his bag of tricks on his first call with a movie studio. He picked up the phone and asked a studio head, "You guys shooting?"
Cruise recalled, "He's like, 'No, no, we can't. We're all shut down for that.' I said, 'Oh, wow. ... You know we're shooting our movies.' And they were like, 'What?' I said, 'Yeah, yeah, we're making our movies.'"
Referring to "Top Gun: Maverick" and the latest "Mission: Impossible" sequel, Cruise faked that he was continuing production in order to string studio heads along. Cruise knew that if he could convince other studios that he was still filming, they would start their own productions, which in turn would actually get his movie the go-ahead to resume.
"I called back a week later, and I was like, 'How's it going?'" the movie star continued. "They said, 'Oh yeah, we're shooting our films.' And I said, 'Cuz we're coming out next summer, you know. ... So you know we're on this date. I hope you're not on this date.'" They're like, 'Well, you know we're making our movie. We're coming out next summer.'"
Cruise then called the studio he was working with and said, "Look, all these guys are making movies. We got to make movies!"
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The 62-year-old actor said if he had not pulled the slick moves, he would not have been able to finish "Top Gun: Maverick" in post-production and he would not have been able to carry on with the sequel of his best spy films.
Cruise also noted he got on the phone with governments, production companies, and those responsible for COVID protocols to map out safety precautions to please the powers that be.
"Everyone was kind of like, 'No, you can't do this; no, you can't do that.' I don't take no for an answer, really, Pat," Cruise told the host.
After establishing the production restrictions, Cruise resumed filming in the U.K. in July 2020 with special permissions from the government. They began with outdoor scenes but were able to avoid a two-week quarantine requirement for actors who were flying in and out to film.
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Why do we love 'Twisters'? Call it the Maverick effect
Talk about a whirlwind summer.
After a lackluster April and May, the box office came roaring back to life with monster hits like "Inside Out 2" and "Deadpool & Wolverine." While those two installments did even better than expected — "Inside Out 2" is now the top-grossing animated film of all time, and "Deadpool & Wolverine" just raked in a cool billion — maybe the biggest surprise of the season is "Twisters."
No superheroes or Jedi warriors; just regular Americans showing up and doing their duty.
Much like one of the titular tornados Glen Powell and crew chase down, the disaster flick's success seemed to come out of nowhere.
In retrospect, it makes sense that audiences would flock to this highly belated sequel to 1996's "Twister." A non-woke, thrilling blockbuster for all ages, with likeable movie stars portraying likeable characters; big, edge-of-your-seat action sequences; and a story with heart? Take our money.
But there’s another reason for all the love: a little factor I like to call the Maverick effect.
Allow me to explain. Two summers ago, ticket sales soared into the stratosphere with the release of another sequel decades in the making: "Top Gun: Maverick."
While "Maverick" has all the virtues I just extolled in "Twisters," there's a little something else both movies share, besides the rising star power of Glen Powell: American pride.
It's a bit more understated than the over-the-top patriotism of '80s classics like "Rambo" or "Rocky IV," and that's what's so appealing about it.
That is to say, both films depict real people doing real things and turn it into epic cinema. Whether they're flying jets at Mach 9 speeds or chasing storms in the untraveled farmlands of Oklahoma, these people are ultimately just doing their jobs.
Where they do those jobs also matters: "Maverick" at the North Island Naval Air Station, San Diego, where brave men and women serve this country over seas and skies; and "Twisters" in the fictional Midwestern everytown of Wakita, Oklahoma. Both settings respectfully evoke the kind of hardworking American communities not often seen on the big screen.
No superheroes or Jedi warriors; just regular Americans showing up and doing their duty. You might say Tom Cruise takes a similar workmanlike approach to his job as a movie star, even if does involve hanging off of the side of a plane or climbing the world's tallest building. And it's clearly rubbed off on his protégé, Powell. Like Cruise before him, the younger star is open about his desire to entertain the "vast parts of America that have been underserved in terms of movies that they want to see.”
Clearly, if you serve them, they will come. Hollywood isn’t known for learning the right lessons from its successes (or its failures), but here’s hoping that the powers that be catch on to the Maverick effect and its endless potential for driving American audiences back to the cinemas.
'The Acolyte' star: Asians need a Tom Cruise of their own
"Star Wars" actor Manny Jacinto argued that there aren't enough Asian people in Hollywood movies and therefore people should write more stories for their own races.
Jacinto, who has starred in the heavily criticized "Star Wars" series "The Acolyte," reflected on his time filming "Top Gun: Maverick" in an interview with GQ.
He commented on how the majority of his lines were left on the cutting room floor, an outcome he generally connected to the idea that producer and star Tom Cruise is making movies for white people.
'At the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise.'
"It's flattering that there was a little bit of an outcry, but it wasn't shocking to me," Jacinto said regarding his reduced role in the film.
"There was this sense of where the film was going [on set], like I can see them focusing the camera more on these [other] guys and not taking so much time on our scenes. Fortunately, it still was a great experience — you get to see this huge machine at work, see how Tom Cruise works, and you get to be a small part of this huge franchise," he explained.
Jacinto said an experience like that "fuels you" because "at the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise."
"It's up to us — Asian-Americans, people of color — to be that [for ourselves]. We can't wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves."
"The Acolyte" seemingly meets those diversity initiatives, according to Jacinto, who said he felt that actors of his race in the "Star Wars" series proved to be meaningful.
"I know there are plenty of 'Star Wars' fans that look like you and me already [in 'The Acolyte']," he told GQ's writer, who is also Asian. "But it's exciting that in this new iteration we have Lee Jung-Jae, myself, Amandla [Stenberg], [and] Jodie Turner-Smith," he added. "Even more people of color will be able to relate to and celebrate and see themselves in this entity that is 'Star Wars.'"
"Star Wars" projects that were released during Jacinto's youth — Episodes I-III — were most certainly diverse, but apparently not to the degree that Jacinto found satisfactory.
"I remember watching all of the movies with my parents growing up, [but] if I'm completely transparent with you, ['Star Wars'] was cool, it was something I admired, but almost from afar. Maybe because I didn't see anybody like me in 'Star Wars,' it was never something I aspired to be in, the way I'd watch a Jackie Chan film or something and go, 'Oh, I want to do that.'"
Creator George Lucas addressed this issue of diversity and representation at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
"They would say, 'It's all white men,' [but] most of the people are aliens!"
"The idea is you're supposed to accept people for what they are, whether they're big and furry or whether they're green or whatever. The idea is all people are equal," he continued, per the Independent. "In the first [movie] there were a few Tunisians who were dark, and in the second one I had Billy Williams, and the [prequels], which they were also criticizing, I had Sam Jackson. He wasn't a scoundrel like Lando. He was one of the top Jedi."
Fending off more criticism, Lucas also addressed complaints that the women in his films appeared too typically feminine.
"You can't just put a woman in pants and expect her to be a hero. They can wear dresses; they can wear whatever they want," he said, noting that female characters were the drivers of the films.
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Here’s The Best List Ranking Every Tom Cruise Movie Ever Made
In order to provide Federalist readers with an accurate accounting of Tom Cruise's movie career, here's a list ranking every film he's ever made.'Mission Impossible 7's' harrowing AND PROPHETIC message about artificial intelligence
Each film in the "Mission Impossible" franchise revolves around IMF agent Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) saving the world from some formidable foe. Sometimes that adversary is a deadly virus, other times a sinister terrorist, and in some cases a weapon of mass destruction.
The most recent film, "Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1" (2023), is no different. It, too, features a daunting enemy that threatens the survival of humanity.
But this time, we’d be wise to pay close attention to the enemy, as it gives us a prescient warning of what is likely waiting for us in the near future.
“The movie makes a really, really good case,” Glenn says, “about what [artificial intelligence] will be like.”
For example, “it will know everything about you, it will be able to predict you because of companies like Google and Facebook” that are “collecting mountains of information,” he continues.
Even something as seemingly benign as a smart refrigerator “is collecting information on you” in order to “know exactly what you’ll do.”
Luckily, there’s a solution for the fictional characters in the film – simply “use the original code” to “reboot the system.”
But in reality, reining in the technological behemoth won’t be so simple.
In the words of Elon Musk, once we “[summon] the demon,” or develop technology capable of teaching itself, there’s a slim chance we’ll be able to regain control once it takes off.
Why can’t we just use the original code and reboot the system like in the film?
“Because it will know you’re going to try to do that,” Glenn shouts. It’s designed to predict your every move, meaning it will always be a step (or several steps) ahead of you.
“The fact is,” Stu adds, “even scientists, even people who have created AI … don’t even seem to know where this is going.”
And it’s undeniably true.
Some of the greatest minds of our current day have expressed hesitancy when it comes to AI.
Elon Musk said, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that.”
Stephen Hawking also warned that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
Stu’s fears don’t end with the unstoppability of AI, though. He also is deeply concerned about what the left intends to “teach” the technology “at the recipe level.”
“They’re seeing this as a huge opportunity,” he warns.
Watch the full clip below.
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