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Roseanne Barr, so objectionable on every level, is still trying to come back.
She’s apparently filmed six episodes of sitcom that sounds antisemitic and maybe racist down in Austin, Texas.
The show is written by former “Roseanne” writer and long ago Adam Sandler collaborator, Allen Covert. In an interview with Page Six, Barr makes it seem like Covert and someone named Allen Stephen are working on the show together. In fact, they are the same person.
Barr has managed to find the most right wing nut jobs for her cast including Randy Quaid, Tony Hinchcliff, and Drea De Matteo. It’s like the unemployment line for loonies. I’m sad to see Jon Lovitz in the mix, but I guess he’s got to make a living.
She says the show is about “the matriarch of a ‘mixed-race family of preppers in Texas’ who is on a quest to ‘throw her granddaughter the most fantastic bat mitzvah Texas has ever seen.’”
It sounds grotesque.
Covert hasn’t written for Sandler since 2011. He’s got producer credit on some of Sandler’s projects through 2017.
Barr was fired by ABC from the revival of her sitcom when she posted a racist message in 2018 about Obama associate Valerie Jarrett. After that she became a pariah, fully cancelled, and ignored by anyone with a shred of intelligence. She went full time MAGA, and Trumper. No one from the “Roseanne” cast speaks to her.
Who will show “Meemaw”? If not Fox Nation or Newsnation, maybe she can slap it onto YouTube and hope for the best.
Jesse Eisenberg’s much touted comedy came to the New York Film Festival last night. It’s an understatement to say it went over big time.
Julianne Moore, you may have heard, is on her way to a second Oscar for Best Actress. She doesn’t have much competition but it doesn’t matter. She’d win even if Meryl Streep and Glenn Close were up against her. She received outbreaks of applause and laughter three times during last night’s screening.
Paul Giamatti can do no wrong. He’ll be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
But it’s Eisenberg who’s the real star. He’s blossomed into a real director-writer-auteur. His last film, “A Real Pain,” was brilliant, and produced an acting Oscar for Kieran Culkin. That would have been enough proof, but “The Debut” cinches it.
I ran into all of them at a pre-screening reception last night at the all new spectacular Bar Boulud on Broadway. This is a trio that knows they’ve made a great gem of a film but — being New Yorkers — it’s all very low key. Jesse even said to me before the screening, “I hope we get a good reception from this crowd.”
How could they not? For one thing, last night’s audience couldn’t have been more custom-made. It was a big Broadway crowd, so much so that Tony winner Bernadette Peters — who sings like a bird in the movie — got a bigger ovation during the introductions that Moore or Giamatti. Peters doesn’t seem to age. She needs to be in more movies!
What is “The Debut” about? In suburban New Jersey, lonely wife and mother of twins-about-to-leave-for-college Mona Friedman (no relation to me because she’s fictional) auditions for a local theater production of a fictitious musical called “Nosy Neighbors.” Giamatti is the director, Jerry, a little imperious but also humorously wise. The cast of “Nosy Neighbors” also includes Stef, a startling good Haile Bailey (she and her real life sister Chloe are pop stars discovered by Beyonce).
Eisenberg wrote the whole fake musical including seven songs. At the screening last night we were each handed a real Playbill for the made up show, which was hilarious and dead serious. Something to remember: “The Debut” is not a satire. It’s a loving look at community theater and the trajectory of Mona’s discovery of herself.
Moore, who has an Oscar for “Still Alice,” benefits from Eisenberg’s tailor made script. (He’s also in the film, as cast member of “Nosy Neighbors.”) This will be her legacy movie performance, however. She’s transcendent as Mona makes her journey from pipsqueak to out of control “star.” Mona is like an onion who gets peeled down to her core, and Moore is never less than fascinating to watch in the process.
PS The picture I used was of Peters on stage last night mimicking the ads for “Evita.” In the movie, she plays a well known local actress who once starred in a production of “Evita.” Mona often sees her poster at the theater. There are a lot of Easter eggs for theater kids in the movie.
Tom Cruise’s “Digger” finally hit the $10 million mark.
It’s actually up to $10.6 million after Wednesday’s box office.
The convoluted film by Alejandro Innaritu still dropped 36% from Tuesday. It was the biggest drop of the current films in release.
Who’s going? Curiosity seekers, I guess. Some of them may be driven by oddly supportive posts on Twitter from either paid influencers or Scientologists — or both.
There are people actually calling “Digger” ‘the best movie of the year.” LOL. Read Ian Mohr’s excellent piece in Page Six/The NY Post about what’s going on.
Now there are reports that “Digger” cost much more than originally thought, possibly as much as $250 million. And it’s all gone, never to be recouped in any way.
Is box office important? Um, yes, unless there’s going to be prestige attached. Last year, “One Battle After Another” wasn’t e big earner, but it won tons of awards including Best Picture. Nothing like it will happen for “Digger.”
Aerosmith has invited all their friends to a two night hootenanny at the end of this month.
Groups like Heart and the Black Crowes, pal Nunno Bettancourt, Billy Idol, and Tom Morello are among those who will walk this way at the Hollywood Bowl on October 29th and November 1st.
Want tickets? Dream on! They should be sold out within seconds of release this week.
Other guests will be announced soon.
I’ve been lucky enough to see Steven Tyler sing in the last year. His voice is much improved from the damage that has come with 50 years of howling. I’m so thrilled he’s feeling well enough to put on these shows. Congrats!
Should’ve known letting Steven do the marquee would take a few takes… More tomorrow. https://t.co/bsV1CMUfDD
Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” is not a sequel to “The Social Network.”
It’s an entirely different movie about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. So let’s get that off the table.
The only character held over from the first movie is Zuckerberg, now played by Jeremy Strong as oddly autistic-seeming and robot like.
It’s a real life story about a Facebook whistle blower named Frances Haugen — played by Oscar winner Mikey Madison — and a Wall Street Journal reporter named Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).
The core of the story is that with Haugen’s help, Horwitz published something called The Facebook Papers in 2021. The gist of that report was that Facebook had tossed out all controls over ethics and civic responsibility just to make money. Hate groups had infiltrated all aspects of the platform.
It was brave of Haugen to step up, and Horwitz produced a compelling report. One question now is, Does anyone care? That’s unclear.
“The Social Reckoning” has so far registered a rather low 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. I see the problem. I liked the film as a procedural, but it’s lacing a compelling purpose. There’s no “gotcha” moment, like in “Spotlight.” Sorkin knows that, too, so in the final quarter of the film he tries to lay responsibility for the January 6th Capitol riots on Zuckerberg.
Suddenly, the most striking part of the film is watching footage of the insurrection. Prior to that, the movie is mostly Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison in a two hander, talking about the ills of a social platform. Can we handle the truth? Yes, actually.
When “The Social Network” was released, there was a lot of hope it would win the Oscar and make a lot of money. Domestically, it failed to make $100 million and the Oscars went elsewhere. The movie was well made, but there was a problem: who really cared about these dorky kids screwing each other over for money? The answer was: not a lot.
Facebook may have been a vehicle for the January 6th rioters. But so, too, was Twitter, and other social media sites. However, the real culprit was Donald Trump, whose name is never uttered in this movie. He encouraged the rioters, worked them into a frenzy, and then did nothing to stop them from violently breaking into the Capitol.
The two Jeremy’s and Mikey Madison are all fine, capable actors but there’s not much here for them to bite into acting wise. I did really like Betty Gilpin as the socially awkward WSJ editor, and Billy Magnussen twirling his mustache — so to speak — as Zuck’s piece of work comms director.
“The Social Reckoning” will come and go now, paving the way in December for the ChatGPT movie, “Artificial.” That will be confusing since Andrew Garfield was in “The Social Network” and is now playing Sam Altman. Do any of the movies matter, in the long run? They’re focused on these evil, no conscience billionaires without looking at the effect of their creations on real people. They’re like “Norma Rae” if it had been about the factory owners. There’s just no sympathy for these devils.
With no fanfare, four unreleased tracks from Paul McCartney’s “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” album have appeared.
I forget they were coming since no one said a word about them.
Are they good? I don’t know. I’m just posting them.
Anyway, “Dungeon Lane” deserves Grammy nominations. First round voting starts in a few days.
There’s an expanded version of the album with these songs and new art. The songs are on all platforms.
UPDATE: I really like “City Fox” as a complete song. The other two are more fun musically than lyrically. In fact, “One Night Stand” is a little odd. Anyway, the reverse version of “Home to Us,” with Ringo singing Paul’s part and vice versa, is really fun.
I told you last week that Miley Cyrus‘s new album, “Bass Persuades,” was curiously dead after less than a week.
Now Billboard shows the album dropped spectacularly from number 1 to 157 in its second week.
It’s a total disaster sales wise, and no one seems to know why.
Miley has disappeared, too. She hasn’t posted to Instagram in 2 weeks. She did no promotion for the album. “Bass Persuades” was just coughed up like a hairball and flushed down the toilet.
It’s even worse on amazon, where “Bass Persuades” has dropped to around number 250.
On iTunes, it’s at number 38.
First week sales were a very shockingly low 60,000. Now they’re zilch.
Very strange stuff going on here. Miley left a long relationship with Sony Music, where she had jumped from RCA to Columbia Records. She went to Atlantic Records, which has been struggling for a while under new leadership and recently lost Ed Sheeran (pre-Macklemore disaster).
You’d think Atlantic would have gone full out to make “Bass Persuades” a hit. But they didn’t seem to raise a finger. And then when the album was released, there was no sign of Miley anywhere.
Adding to the mystery: the Country Music Awards is hosting a live TV special tribute to the late Dolly Parton on October 21. They’ve announced rafts of big name acts, but no Miley. She’s Dolly’s goddaughter, and has made a party trick out of singing “Jolene.”
Dolly passed away August 25th after a long illness that was hidden from the public. It’s no doubt a loss for Miley, but Dolly wouldn’t want her to withdraw from life.
“SNL” dipped in the second week of its 52nd season.
Despite Taylor Swift making a surprise appearance during the host monologue, the show dipped to 4.6 million from 4.8 in the premiere week.
Dakota Johnson was the laconic host, and hardcore rockers Turnstile were the music act. Dakota tried to spice up her opening by discussing her dating history with rock stars, but it wasn’t funny and the audience seemed uninterested.
Turnstile was a bit of a shock, making a rock racket with a shirtless drummer. I joked that Turnstile was something you had to get through. Indeed, the band has low sales and weren’t much of a draw for viewers. Their album, “Never Enough,” proved plenty. It’s number 28 on iTunes.
The show actually did better on YouTube, where fans can watch individual sketches instead of making it through the 90 minute show. The cold open scored a whopping 5.1 million views — a half million higher more than the show itself. After that, most sketches leveled off to 1 million or fewer views.
That’s when the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced.
We’ll watch Donald Trump’s head explode when his name is not mentioned.
There are 287 candidates nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026, of which 208 are individuals and 79 are organizations. Trump was nominated by one of his cronies, but the likelihood of him getting it is slightly worse than JD Vance admitting to an affair with a loveseat. Trump is running an active war in Iran, and is responsible for conflicts in the Mid East and Ukraine. He’s also deported thousands of immigrants to countries they’ve never been to, and broken up countless families.
Here’s a potential list of honorees, although there could be a surprise:
The International Space Station (ISS): Highlighted as a rare symbol of enduring global and multilateral geopolitical cooperation in space.
Mark Carney:
Prime Minister of Canada, noted among international political forecasters.
Mykola Kuleba & Save the Children: Recognized for rescue operations and protecting children in Ukrainian conflict zones.
Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms: Local volunteer networks providing decentralized, lifesaving aid during internal conflict.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC): Nominated for upholding international law and accountability.
Francesca Albanese: Upholding international law and human rights regarding the conflict in Gaza.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Nominated alongside the people of Ukraine for resisting Russian aggression.
Yulia Navalnaya: Russian opposition figure continuing her husband’s democratic work.
Tom Cruise’s social satire movie has been buried under the rubble of bad reviews.
And audience apathy.
“Digger” made $8 million over the weekend, on a budget of at least $150 million. Warner Bros, or Skydance, will wind up writing the whole thing off.
Monday’s box office didn’t help. The movie fell 59% and made just $760,000. Mondays are usually good days for new “adult” films. Kids are back in school and theaters are wide open for civilized discourse.
Meantime, the studio is trying to churn up social media, even using the movie’s bad reviews as a lure. It’s an interesting choice, to be sure.
Warner Bros? Sold today to Paramount Skydance, and the studio’s leaders have found out in the press that their jobs are over. But never fear — “Dune 3” is coming for the holidays, and it will be very very big!
Tom, meantime, stays positive. He adds on Instagram: “DIGGER is officially in theaters and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists. Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work, and joy. The experience was truly unforgettable and I’m so proud of what we created.”
