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The latest in a trilogy of straight to video D list movies with Bruce Willis is coming December 6th. “Trauma Center” looks like it cost four dollars. Bruce speaks haltingly in it, and not just because of the screenplay. It does seem like the main action is set on a young actress, Nicky Whelan, who is stalked in an empty hospital by killers until Bruce returns to save the day after leaving her there “safely.” Willis looks like maybe he worked a day or two. Same for Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn,” in which he disappears after 10 minutes.
“Trauma Center” is the middle piece of garbage after “10 Minutes Gone” — which had a total worldwide box office of $13,679 according to the Internet Movie Data Base– and before “The Long Night.” A couple more look like they’re in the planning stages. Whoever cut these deals is doing Bruce, who’s got to be wealthier than Zeus, no favors for his legacy. The movies are terrible, he’s not the star, and he looks and sounds terrible. The movies don’t play in the theaters, and they’re even hard to find on video platforms. Isn’t there a better way to deal with Bruce’s situation? He was a mega star at the box office, and charming as hell.
Nicky Whelan is the queen of D list movies. Her resume is a long recitation of titles you’ve never heard. She has the background, though: at least three movies with Nicolas Cage, whose Oscar is in the pawn shop.
PS Sylvester Stallone should write a funny screenplay for Bruce, Cage, and John Travolta called “VOD.”
John Clarke, who played Mickey Horton on “Days of our Lives” from its first episode in 1965 through 2004– 39 years– has died at age 88. The cause of death reportedly is pneumonia.
Clarke is survived by a big family including his daughter, Melinda, who was featured on the TV show ‘The O.C.” Before “Days of our Lives,” Clarke appeared on a lot of classic TV including “The Twilight Zone.”
For playing Mickey, he received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Best Actor, and took home a Lifetime Achievement Award as well.
Mickey Horton was the put upon good guy family lawyer on “Days.” He continually saved everyone’s hide as his family members were constantly getting into trouble. When I was in grade school, I watched “Days” with our housekeeper after I got home from school. All I remember is Julie (Susan Seaforth Hayes, still on the show 51 years later) asking “Uncle Mickey” to help her with something or other.
Clarke played the part stoically. His character, though supposedly brilliant, didn’t know he was “sterile” (a word they used used in every episode) and had been cuckolded by his brother and sister-in-law, who’d passed their child off as his. You can imagine why he left the show after four decades!
Kanye West will unveil his “Jesus is King” film tomorrow in Los Angeles. The tickets are free for the first performance, and they’ll be given away via Ticketmaster at 10am Pacific Time.
Then the movie will open Friday, and the album, after many delays, will be available. At least this is the official word from DefJam. It seems like they may finally have this project under control.
No word yet about platforms for streaming the album. And it looks like there might be a blue vinyl version from the evidence of the logo, or maybe not.
The movie seems to be about a gospel choir singing in something called the Roden Crater, an art project in Arizona. Kanye didn’t direct the film or the choir, but he instigated the project so it’s a “Kanye West film.” Let’s hope it doesn’t crater!
Here is the final trailer for the final “Star Wars” movie, “The Rise of Skywalker.” All signs point to the biggest movie of all time, bigger than “Endgame.” This is the END, people. Forty three years of filmmaking and merchandising and legend all lead to this moment. It looks damn good. Interesting– no Luke or Leia in this trailer. I still wonder if we won’t see Han Solo one more time…
Like Elton John’s new “Me,” Carly Simon’s “Touched by the Sun,” is a surprisingly fresh and candid memoir. It’s a great read I’d always wanted from the confessional singer-songwriter whose life has included a pageant of famous names. It’s almost like a coda to her autobiography, “Boys in the Trees,” which was pretty juicy and insightful. (And I hope she follows this volume with a couple more.) She’ll make a rare appearance Tuesday night at Barnes & Noble in Union Square to sign books.
Way back in the mid 1980s Carly showed me some prose writing she had done that was exceptional, and told me Jackie Onassis wanted to publish it at Doubleday. They’d become great friends on Martha’s Vineyard. That book didn’t happen, but now Carly has written a lovely, endearing tome about their relationship, and associated pals of the era. It reminds me of Elizabeth Hardwick’s “Sleepless Nights” or Joyce Johnson’s “Minor Characters.” You can’t get enough of this opening to a private portal to history.
The book is almost as much about Carly as it is about Jackie, which is just about right. Jackie was a private, shy person. So is Carly. That they bonded makes perfect sense. They were each married to famous men, whom they still loved even after they’d left, whether dead (JFK) or alive (James Taylor). Simon writes: “We both had had husbands who were “gone” for us, yet whose voices remained.”
Simon weaves in a lot complex people, not just Onassis, through “Touched by the Sun,” including her own family, her formidable mother, her children and so on. But what readers will eat up is her humanizing of Jackie, who kept herself walled off from the public after becoming the most famous and chased celebrity of all time. I always wondered how she went on living after JFK’s assassination, and how she navigated living with the memories.
She tells Simon: “One is overwhelmed by the necessity to cover up the sentiments that are needed in order to go forward with one’s life. I had to make such a grand left turn so as not to be reminded of my former life,” Jackie explained.
Simon offers: “The life would have to be so completely different,” I offered, “like landing on the surface of a different planet.”
So Jackie Kennedy surprised the world and married older billionaire shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
Jackie continued, “I wondered if I went to the trouble of removing signs, newspapers, photographs, mementos . . .
never mind. He wouldn’t have seen it clearly, but the reminders were walking every day with me in the bodies of my children.
Their walks, their mannerisms, the memories of their births. First words, skating, riding, greetings, nightmares, Christmases, birthdays . . . worries that A.O. [this was how Jackie sometimes referred to Ari] could never erase.”
Simon– who, believe me. has enough to deal with in her own life– becomes witness to history. Over the course of a decade, Jackie drops little hints of her personal life. Of sister Lee Radziwill (recently deceased) she tells Carly: “With my sister,
there was always the one-upmanship. It was predictable and inevitable. I made her so mad she used to try to outdo me. And she did!”
There’s more, a lot more, about everyone, and how Carly– certainly a big star in her own right– deals with the biggest star of all. In “Touched by the Sun,” she’s just like us. There’s the whole issue of being public vs. private and being recognized. When they go out together “Jackie would always pretend people were staring at me,” Simon says, knowing better. Did she think for one second I would ever fall for that? Still, the deflection was charming and for the briefest of seconds flattering, before I reminded myself of the absurdity of it all. As the world knows by now, Jackie disliked being the center of attention. In her presence, I never remembered or accepted the fact that I was a well-known person in my own right. In my own field. But compared to hers, my field was a small garden of roses in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.”
A great read, and PS the audio book is read aloud by actress Elizabeth McGovern, currently of “Downton Abbey” fame.
Since Rupert Murdoch (Don Corleone to you) is already running the State News Network (Fox News) and working with Donald Trump (see meeting with Attorney General William Barr) so why not double down?
Murdoch, according to Vanity Fair, is going to bring his UK Sun tabloid to the US. He already owns the New York Post, but why not spread his salacious wings? And the person who’s going to run the US Sun? Why, Rebekah Brooks, the key person in the UK hacking scandal that also involved son James Murdoch. now chief investor in the Tribeca Film Festival. (This is also like Franz Liekind in “The Producers” saying about the Nazis–War, what war? We were in the back.)
Brooks managed to escape going to prison when she was acquitted in the hacking trial. Just as Puff Daddy didn’t go to jail after his nightclub shoot out, but rapper Shyne did, News of the World editor Andy Coulson took the rap and went behind bars. Brooks skipped out of the courtroom and went back to work for News Corp. She’s been in the US for some time, doing something, and this is it.
The Sun has been advertising for a Head of Audience-US on the News Corp site all month. So this is happening. The US Sun will compete, says Joe Pompeo, with the US Daily Mail, a wild hit that just aggregates and steals from everywhere, mocks everyone famous, turns small potatoes into large mashed ones. Where does that leave the Post, and Page Six? They will seem tame by comparison.
Will it work? As Pompeo points out, and those of us who recall will tell you, Murdoch tried to create The Daily, an app-based paper with Apple years ago. That was a stunning failure. Page Six TV has also come and gone. The Post loses millions despite all efforts to excite the masses with semi-truthful news. The online reader is already inundated with so much fake gossip that it hurts. It will be interesting to see if The US Sun is some kind of stalking horse for Trump, now that the National Enquirer can no longer carry his invective and fiction (Hillary is dying! etc.)
Meantime, wait til Murdoch and friends get a load of the movie “Bombshell.” Malcolm McDowell plays Rupe beautifully. And listening to Ailes call James Murdoch names is the sound of music.
As the Oscar season narrows down, many nominations are coming into focus. I see a lot of lists on Gold Derby and other places, some with spot-on choices and others with longshots longer than Donald Trump asking Nancy Pelosi to replace him in the White House.
Now comes a big monkey wrench into the mix: Jay Roach’s “Bombshell,” all about Roger Ailes’s reign of terror against the women of Fox News. It was screened last week in Los Angeles, and last night in New York for SAG and some press. (The moderator, Lynn Hirschberg, of W Magazine, was a lively relief. Let’s have her some more!) “Bombshell,” from Lions Gate, doesn’t open until December 20th. There’s a review embargo. So this isn’t a review, just an observation.
And another cliche: “Bombshell” upsets the apple cart for the women’s acting categories. Charlize Theron is absolutely going to be Renee Zellweger’s main competition for Best Actress. Theron’s performance as Megyn Kelly is as immersive as Zellweger’s as Judy Garland. If I were Kelly, I’d look in the mirror and make sure I’m still there. Theron is inhabiting her.
“Bombshell” really clouds up the Best Supporting Actress and Actor categories. Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie, respectively, as Gretchen Carlson and a fictional Fox employee (a composite of Ailes’ victims) will take two of the five supporting slots. Lithgow, as Ailes, has to be nominated in supporting.
Also, as someone whispered to me last night, “Bombshell” has quite the ensemble. They will be recognized for that.
“Bombshell” will also be occupying slots for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay. The weird thing here is that the movie will beat the Showtime series, “Loudest Voice in the Room,” to awards activity. The Oscars will precede the Emmys by six months.
“Loudest Voice,” which starred Russell Crowe and Naomi Watts, was excellent. But it aired in summer, when viewership is low. A lot of people didn’t see it. The six episodes are wonderful but have a different tone and temperament than a two hour movie. They are different animals.
I’ll tell you more about “Bombshell” when the embargo ends. But as a former Fox victim, I can say I was totally caught up in it. And you will be too. My only question is, how do we feel about these actors playing really awful people? Because the women — despite being sexually harassed — were not forced to deliver, day after day, crazy right wing opinions, Fake News, and so on. That’s something that will be debated. Much as they are all impeccably portrayed, these are real people you cannot congratulate or honor.
In October 2009, the original “Zombieland” had an opening weekend of $24.7 million. Ten years later, its sequel has landed with numbers as good: $26.7 million. Zombies never get old!
By contrast, this weekend we had “Maleficent 2,” five years after the original. The first one had a $70 million weekend. The new one? Just $36 million. Not evil enough for the US. Will still do very well around the globe. But Angelina Jolie might give some thought to doing serious movies in which she has to interact like an actual human with other characters.
Maybe they should have titled it “Femaleficent.” That might have increased audience.
“Downton Abbey” hits $88 million today. I’d love to see the screenplay for number 2. And to hear the conversations with Maggie Smith. The Dowager Countess’s cancer is moving slowly. Or misdiagnosed.
At the same time, “Gemini Man” doubled its problems, taking in just $8.5 million this weekend, two million LESS than predicted. The whole thing is over. Total now is $36 million. Say goodbye at $45 million if lucky. That’s a LOT of money lost. A big write down.
Also news-worthy: Jennifer Lopez has now starred in her first $100 million film as “Hustlers” crosses the mark today. JL0 is headed to the Golden Globes, certainly, in the supporting actress category. But Oscars look like a slim chance now that Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie are filling two spots from “Bombshell.” Annette Bening takes the third for “The Report.” Laura Dern is IN for “Marriage Story.” It’s likely we’ll get two more choices from “Little Women.” But Lopez should be happy with the Globes, which is not exactly chopped liver.
My “Bombshell” review is coming, but in the meantime, Kidman’s subtle work as Gretchen Carlson is really a knockout, and so central to the movie. It was really cool and brave of her to take a supporting role in a movie. But she is a risk taker and a good gambler. Robbie could tip the other way to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” But this work is the best of her very strong career. Wait for the big review to hear about Charlize and John Lithgow.
Friday box office: Angelina Jolie’s “Maleficent 2” or “Mistress of Evil” scared up $12.5 million Friday including the $2.5 mil from Thursday. It’s not a record breaker but people went, and more will flood into today and tomorrow at matinees. Critics hated it, but “M2” is candy corn, it’s not a movie (see Scorsese comments). Angelina has 6 kids and bills to pay, so let’s be kind. She’s got her Oscar, and she’s an ambassador to everything.
Will Smith’s “Gemini Man” is dead again. Someone thought that this weekend’s total would be $10.5 million, which the very reliable boxofficemojo.com put into their projections. Well, last night Gemini Man took in just $2.3 million, so I don’t know how that’s going to work out unless a sudden mob scene occurs in theaters. “Gemini Man” will be lucky to stir up $7 million, and even then I can’t imagine why–the word of mouth is worse than the reviews.
“Zombieland: Double Tap” actually made a very healthy $10.5 million last night including Thursday previews. The sequel to “Adventures in Zombieland” did a lot better than you might imagine, but zombies are always popular. (Look at the red states for more on that.) So we’ve got a modest hit, and a good airplane movie, or rental when the time comes. I’m psyched. Don’t denigrate this sort of film. It’s what keeps us going!
Just a few days after 16 new possible inductees’ nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we have a leading candidate.
On the RRHOF site, votes have poured in from the public. These votes will be weighed against the nominating committee’s ideas. Then a real ballot will go out to all the members.
So far the highest number of votes has been garnered by 80s rocker Pat Benatar. She’s got 127,695 votes early in the game. Hot on her heels are the Doobie Brothers, Soundgarden, Depeche Mode, and Judas Priest. (If the latter gets in yikes.)
Not doing so well in the vote so far is the late rapper, Notorious BIG. I’m not surprised. He has nothing to do with rock. I can’t imagine why he’s on the list. He has 60,000 votes.
People who do have a lot to do with rock, the MC5, are at the bottom of the voting. Here’s an idea for new RRHall Foundation chairman John Sykes: just wave in a bunch of actual influential rockers and players who will never get in. MC5, J Geils, Chubby Checker, et al. Open the door and let ’em in. Wipe the slate clean. (T. Rex, too.)
