Licorice Pizza, American Underdog

For years, I’ve been hoping that Paul Thomas Anderson would turn away from art-house auteur fare, with its shapeless storylines, twisted characters, and exasperating ambiguity. Picture PTA directing Fast Times at Ridgemont High and you’ll grasp the vibe of Licorice Pizza, a 133-minute rom-com in the early-1970s San Fernando Valley interspersed with various SoCal oddballs the youngsters meet while they’re trying to decide whether to start a romance. Licorice Pizza  anti-beauty, indie arrogance even delivers—I can hardly believe I’m typing these words about a PTA film—a big, satisfying smile at the end. The film takes its title from a Seventies Southern California record-store chain. Cooper Hoffman plays a 15-year-old high-school student named Gary Valentine who opens the movie by pestering a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant he meets while waiting in line for his yearbook photo. Alana Kane, is played with low-key appeal by another rookie actor, Alana Haim, for whom Anderson has directed music videos. She intermittently slaps him in the chops or flirts with other guys, but she also keeps hanging around him. Who wouldn’t? The kid’s going places. In his drive to appear smart, Anderson treats each sequence elliptically: Gary’s run-in with Lucille Ball; his TV-interview effrontery with Art Linkletter; Alana’s encounter with William Holden (Sean Penn), Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) figures; her defiant trick on Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) and brief venture into political work (Benny Safdie as a local pol). Anderson’s nearly cinema-destroying impudence contrasts with Tarantino’s fan-boy romanticism in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Anderson’s quite ugly aesthetic presumes superiority over the more conventional La La Land yet misses the emotional, life-affirming richness of the former. Despite lively episodes of assorted unresolved interactions, Licorice Pizza’s entertainment value finally gets vague. Gary and Alana's story feels unfinished. Anderson’s role model—Floyd Mutrux—used marvelous ’70s quotidian narratives (Aloha Bobby and Rose, American Hot Wax) and endowed his characters with wonder, using all the elements of beauty in a film artist’s arsenal. Source: www.nationalreview.com

Until the end of “Licorice Pizza,” Alana is in doubt about her relationship with Gary. But a subtle incident leaves behind a major impact on her decision that even clears the air of doubt too. While on a dinner with councilman Joel Wachs, she realizes that with all the men she had been with so far, it was never about her, instead of about them, their desires, their wants, and their public image. But Gary was the only person who never pretended that he cared because, in reality, he actually did.  Alana gets an epiphany of sorts when she finds out Joel Wachs was just calling her to avoid the suspicion that was being raised about him being a gay person. She has a brief conversation with Mathew, Wach’s lover, and for the first time, she lifts the veil and gets clarity. She is done with accommodating the idea of that perfect life and those feigned emotions because no matter how hard she tried, she failed to fit into it. She stops being pretentious and, for the first time, considers Gary as somebody with whom she could be herself. Gary, too realizes that he was done beating around the bush and that he needs to tell Alana how much she means to him. Finally, they meet, removing the ambiguity that smogged their relationship and welcoming each other in their respective lives for a happily ever after, maybe. “Licorice Pizza” leaves you with a cozy and warm feeling that might be said to be a tad bit optimistic but never deceives you by showing the characters in an idealistic light or devoid of any flaws. Source: dmtalkies.com

“American Underdog” is a winner. No single person can attempt to do the impossible; few souls understood that more than Kurt Warner. He was the guy who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to winning the Super Bowl MVP award. But the good thing about “American Underdog,” the new film based on Warner’s rise to NFL stardom, is that it focuses on the love story with Brenda that helped bolster that Cinderella tale. Played by Zachary Levi and Anna Paquin, Kurt and Brenda faced many adversities and hardships before he took over for the injured Trent Green in what turned out to be a storybook season back in 1999.  While the football scenes are aplenty and slickly filmed, the spectacular debut with the Rams is more of a climax here. So, stop worrying about whether or not Levi can throw a spiral, and just take this as an old school romance with some sports thrown in. Levi and Paquin fit well into their roles, which helps the movie considerably. If you mess up these two roles, “American Underdog” sinks. They share some chemistry, offering moviegoers a small peek at the life these two built out of misfortune and some luck. 

We learn to love them as people first before the national sports power couple they eventually became–just like Kurt learned to love Brenda’s family before marrying her. Levi’s best scenes aren’t on a football field; they’re at home with Brenda’s (and eventually his) son, Zack. This is where the playing field shifts to more the actor’s natural strengths. There’s a gentleness to Levi’s giant here that balances out the life and sports hardships he faced. A key scene involving the Warners’ car breaking down in the middle of a snow storm, with Kurt walking for miles to get gas and return, reaches an epic scale. Levi and Paquin are too old to play the characters at this phase of their lives (Levi is 41, Paquin is 38), but their chemistry is excellent and they're both exceptional actors, so it's not hard to get past all that. The best thing about the film is its refusal to move according to the prescribed rhythms of the standard-issue sports picture. From start to finish, it prefers to focus on what's happening off-field. It returns to the gridiron only when it's time to set up the next career milestone, and the milestones are only important inasmuch as they affect the lives of Kurt, Brenda, and Zack. "American Underdog" is about a couple moving through the years and getting to know each other and look out for each other. This approach might be unique among sports films. In real life, after Kurt Warner was cut from the Packers' training camp in 1994, he got a job working the night shift as a night stock clerk at a local Hy-Vee grocery store, in addition to his work as an assistant coach at Northern Iowa. Warner's future wife Brenda Carney's parents were killed in 1996 when their Mountain View, Arkansas home was destroyed by a tornado. Warner and Brenda married on October 11, 1997, at the St. John American Lutheran Church, the same place where the service for Brenda's parents was held. Warner was still hoping to get an NFL tryout, but with that possibility appearing dim and the long hours at Hy-Vee for minimum wage taking their toll, Warner begins his Arena Football League career. After marrying Brenda, Warner officially adopted her two children from her first marriage; they have since added five children of their own. Source: rogerebert.com 

Oscar Nominations 2022

Jane Campion's “The Power of the Dog,” a revisionist Western that uses a careworn genre to examine toxic masculinity, dominated the Academy Awards on Tuesday with 12 nods. It was followed closely behind by “Dune,” a sprawling adaptation of a popular sci-fi novel that was once believed to be unfilmable, which defied naysayers to earn 10 Oscar nominations. “West Side Story,” Steven Spielberg’s ravishing take on a beloved musical, and “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age story, each received 7 nominations. All four of those films are up for best picture, joining a race that includes “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley.” 

Guillermo Del Toro's neo-noir “Nightmare Alley” has received 4 Oscar nods. “West Side Story,” “Belfast” and “Nightmare Alley” were among the many films that failed to convert critical raves into ticket sales. Oscar voters largely steered clear of more populist choices. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which has become one of the rare post-pandemic blockbusters, was overlooked in the best picture category. Its omission is bad news for the Oscar producers given that the telecast usually gets a rating boost when a popular film is up for major awards, something that happened when “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” and “Titanic” dominated the race. 

Spielberg now ranks alongside Billy Wilder and behind Martin Scorsese’s nine nominations and William Wyler’s 12 nods in the category. Best actor is a race between Hollywood heavyweights Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of MacBeth”) and Will Smith (“King Richard”), along with respected veterans such as Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”) and Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”).  Best actress will be a contest between Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”). The 94th annual Academy Awards will be on March 27 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. The in-person ceremony will be televised on ABC. For the first time in three years, the Oscars will have a host in 2022, Craig Erwich, president of ABC Entertainment and Hulu Originals, announced in January. Variety later learned that multiple hosts will likely take the stage, however no official names have been revealed yet. Source: variety.com

Standards of Masculinity, The Last Duel, Matt Damon and Good Will Hunting

Women who are in a relationship with men and feel that their partner has a fragile masculinity are likely to change their behavior, a new study suggests. For instance, the more women perceive their partner’s sense of masculinity as fragile, the more likely they are to fake orgasms. Furthermore, the more women perceived their partner’s manhood as precarious, the more anxiety they felt and the more likely it is for couple communication to deteriorate. Lead author Jessica Jordan of the University of South Florida said: “One of my colleagues, a collaborator on this study, first raised the idea of studying if men who are insecure in their masculinity are less likely to solicit sexual feedback from their female partners. I immediately thought, “It doesn’t matter if they do, women are not going to give honest feedback if they think their partner’s masculinity is easily threatened.” “If a woman is concerned about inadvertently threatening her partner’s manhood, that could lead to a breakdown of communication,” Jordan explains. A following study on 196 women found that when women felt their partner had a fragile manhood, they were less likely to provide honest sexual communication. A third study on 157 women found that women who made more money than their partners were twice as likely to fake orgasms. However, Jordan says we shouldn’t point the blame on either men or women, and this type of behavior is understandable, though problematic. If men are not made aware that their behavior is creating a problem for their partners, it is hard to address the core issue. “When society creates an impossible standard of masculinity to maintain,” says Jordan, “nobody wins.” The study was published in the January issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. Source: neurosciencenews.com

The first chapter of The Last Duel centered on Jean follows a hero type who might’ve appeared in a classical text. He’s an idealistic warrior devoted to what is morally right and what “should be,” but it becomes evident in subsequent chapters that he’s neither a politician nor particularly adept socially. However, his face shows the scars of many victorious battles. It’s Matt Damon’s best performance in years, and one cannot help but see Jean as a kind of redneck stereotype by the third chapter. His devotion to duty and tradition reads as naively patriotic, particularly after his exploits earn him a knighthood. By Jacques’ chapter, we see that others deem Jean temperamental, a laughing stock, even. Jean sees Jacques as villainous and vindictive and Marguerite as devoted and proud of his accomplishments.  When she tells Jean what happened with Jacques, his reaction: “Can this man do nothing but evil to me?” Jean declares, viewing the incident as yet another personal slight against his manhood. Meanwhile, Marguerite’s sex life becomes a matter for the courts. An inquisitor drills her about whether she experiences the “little death” with her husband in bed, which, big surprise, Jean’s approach to lovemaking cannot produce. She lies and confirms that Jean brings her to orgasm, knowing that the era’s men believed that conception requires pleasure and rape cannot lead to pregnancy. “This is science,” affirms the inquisitor. Source: deepfocusreviews.com

Matt Damon, along with Don Cheadle, David Pressman, аnd Jerry Weintraub, іs one оf thе founders оf Not оn Our Watch Project, аn organization that focuses global attention аnd resources to stop аnd prevent mass atrocities such аs the Darfur war. Damon іs also а brand-ambassador оf ONEXONE: a philanthropic foundation which is working for supporting, preserving, аnd improving thе lives оf children at home іn Canada, thе United States, аnd around thе world. Damon is also one of the co-founders of nonprofits Water.org & Water Equity. 

In Good Will Hunting, both Sean and Chuckie are actual protectors of Will (Matt Damon). Sean is  completely obvious as he helps steer Will into and through his psychological miasma. Chuckie is the one member of Will’s clan who has enough depth of perception to spur Will on to a broader horizon, so when he shows up, knocks on Will’s door and Will isn’t there, Chuckie is happy. Due to past abuses when he was just a kid, Will has a rage inside born of his many foster home experiences including the man who beat him (we actually catch a fleeting image of this tyrant climbing the stairs literally in shadows to wail on young Will). So until Will can confront and embrace those dark memories and associations from his troubled past he will always be ruled by them and his rage. Nor will he feel worthy of love, which is what drives Skylar away in the first place. It’s only after she goes and he has his breakthrough with Sean, compounded by the offer of a job on behalf of the U.S. government, it all congeals into the choice Will makes: To drive off to California to be with Skylar. Source: goingtothestory.com 

American researchers Jean Twenge, Ryne Sherman and Brooke Wells published an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior showing that Americans were having sex on average nine fewer times per year in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s – a 15% drop from 62 times a year to just 53. The researchers argued the drops may be due to increasing levels of unhappiness. Western societies in particular have seen a mental health epidemic in the past few decades, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. There is a strong correlation between depressive symptoms and reduction in sexual activity and desire. Research connects these mental health epidemics with the increasingly insecure nature of modern life, particularly for younger generations. It is this generation that has shown the highest drops in sexual activity, with research from Jean Twenge showing millennials are reporting having fewer sexual encounters than either Generation X or the baby boomers did at the same age. A mixture of work, insecurity and technology is leading us all to feel slightly less aroused. Drops in sexual activity could be argued, therefore, to reflect the nature of modern life. This phenomenon is a mixture of insecurity and technology. Tackling the sexual decline will require dealing with the very causes of the mental health crisis facing Western worlds–a crisis that is underpinned by losses of communal and social spaces. Source: www.bbc.com

Ozark Season 4: The Beginning of the End

Dr. Thomas J. West: I think that Ozark is significantly more interesting than Breaking Bad. It’s not that I don’t like Breaking Bad. In fact, like so many other viewers, I found myself utterly transfixed by Bryan Cranston’s performance as Walter White, the school teacher who turns to cooking high-grade meth to help pay his medical bills and begins a slide into moral depravity. And it has to be said that in some ways Ozark is a bit derivative of Breaking Bad (though it’s also fair to point out that Breaking Bad was itself derivative of other crime dramas that preceded it). Like its predecessor, it focuses on a mild-mannered man who gets increasingly caught up in the world of drug cartels and money laundering. Marty flees to the Ozarks with his wife Wendy and their two children Jonah and Charlotte to set up a new series of money laundering operations for his drug cartel overlords, as they get further sucked into the criminal vortex.

For far too much of its run, Breaking Bad seemed to work overtime to make Walter White's wife Skyler into the sort of castrating bitch stereotype that is all-too-common in premium cable dramas focused on the “struggles” of deeply dysfunctional men. Ozark, however, takes a very different approach to the question of criminality. To start with, Bateman’s Marty is no Walter White. Though Bateman does have moments of intensity, for the most part he’s a far colder personality, more cerebral and ultimately less hubristic than Walter ever was. More than that, though, the series seems genuinely invested in its female characters and how they contend with changing fortunes of the Byrdes.

One of the fascinating things about this show is the fact that Marty and Wendy, despite everything, do seem to genuinely love one another, and there is never any question that they also love their children and will do anything to protect them. By the time that we get to the 3rd season, Wendy’s own sense of what is best for her family has begun to diverge sharply from Marty’s, in part because, when it comes right down to it, she’s more ambitious than he is. Whereas a show like Breaking Bad, with its relentless and cloying interest in Walter’s toxic masculinity, would paint such ambition as deviant and dangerous, in terms of the narrative it is Wendy’s ambition that keeps things rolling forward and, strangely enough we in the audience find ourselves wanting her to succeed. She’s the antihero that we’re led to cheer for her as she steadily keeps up with Marty, forging alliances with unscrupulous billionaires (and then betraying them), manipulating politicians to get a casino gambling license approved, and cozying up to Navarro. 

Marty is a long way from Walter White. And as played with intriguing opacity by Jason Bateman, those differences are what helps Ozark find its own rhythm. The horror of Breaking Bad was its reveal of the murderous, greedy megalomaniac hiding beneath the surface of a seemingly mild-mannered chemistry teacher. In Ozark, our antihero never deliberately kills anyone, never plots anybody’s death and never really changes from the slightly wonkish number-cruncher we meet at the beginning of the first season. We’re not even sure if he’s actually evil—if anything, Ozark’s horror is that the audience doesn’t know precisely how to feel about this wholly anonymous nobody. In Arrested Development, Michael Bluth was always confident in the fact that he was brighter than all the spoiled idiots in his family—a realization that often led to laughs when his overconfidence resulted in his own comedic undoing. Marty carries that same edge of superiority into every scene he enters, especially when he lands in the Ozarks, using his polite, unthreatening manner to sweet-talk failing local-yokel business owners into selling their shops, presenting himself as an “angel investor” whose financial acumen can turn their stores around. Marty is the very model of a blank-slate financial planner: He’s got a head for numbers and is adept at convincing people to trust him, but he seems so devoted to logic that he’s almost entirely programmed out anything about himself that might be human. Marty justifies his potential involvement with the cartel by explaining flatly, “I wouldn’t be a mule, I wouldn’t be a dealer — I’d be just pushing my mouse around my desk.”

That kind of rationalization is how he handles everything in Ozark. Walter White built his meth empire to feed his need for power, getting off on being the badass after decades of feeling like an ineffectual loser. Marty does nothing out of emotion or for his ego—everything is executed with the bloodlessness and cold efficiency of a keystroke. As Marty’s life gets more complicated in Ozark and different people want him dead, he doesn’t discover a newfound, darker persona or get a taste for killing. In fact, Marty never once even mentions the idea of bumping off any of his many adversaries—a move that Walter White and other characters have discovered is a handy way of getting out of tight spots. Marty is too buttoned-down to ever consider something so heinous. If he’s indeed evil, it’s the kind that’s a lot less showy. 

Sure, he may launder drug dealers’ millions, but Marty is not a monster, os is he? In the aftermath of Breaking Bad, there’s been a lot of talk about why we watch (and maybe even root for) dastardly characters, and the answer is usually that because they’re such nuanced, compelling figures we become magnetized by their contradictions and mixture of charm and malice. Ozark challenges that assumption by giving us an antihero so plainly ordinary that there’s no sheer glee or revulsion in watching Marty try to outfox his foes. When Mason tells Marty, “There’s gotta be a god, because there’s the devil. I think you’re the fucking devil.” That statement is a shock to Marty—and maybe the audience too. At the height of his power, Heisenberg arrogantly demanded to his underlings, “Say my name.” But most monsters aren’t like that—more often, they’re like Marty, who hopes you don’t notice him at all. Source: medium.com

The Byrde family fans flocked to Netflix to watch “Ozark” Season 4, Part 1, drawing more viewers than any other TV series in its debut week. The first half of the final season of Ozark landed at No. 1 on Netflix’s English-language TV Top 10 list for the week of Jan. 17-23, with 77 million hours viewed in just its first three days. One of the “Ozark” directors, Amanda Marsalis, revealed that Part 2 will drop sometime this May. So, we’re only a few short months away from the end of the Byrd family’s story. Netflix dropped the first seven episodes (Part 1) on Friday, Jan. 21. While Marty seems more jaded on Season 4, Wendy looks even more hardened and controlling. During one sparring session with Jonah, Wendy spits out, “You need to grow up. This is America. People don’t care where your fortune came from.” When trying to woo a potential business partner who’s wary of associating with money launderers, Wendy says, “It’s the only way to make the bad mean something: Bury it. Bury it. Pile good on top of good.” Clearly, Wendy is justifying her own actions this way. As the Byrdes expand from a typical upper-middle class family into a political power couple, they’re becoming more than an oddity; with their win-at-all-costs attitude, ever-deepening pockets, and lack of comeuppance for irrefutable wrongs, they represent the corruption rooted within USA.

One has to wonder if there’s enough truth in Wendy’s convictions to save her family; if her “go big or go home” attitude, paired with a loose moral compass, is just the thing that will get her out of trouble. This is America, and in America, powerful people with lots of powerful friends tend to make out OK. On the other hand, the Byrdes have been toying with folks—the Snells, the Navarros, etc.—who shoot first and worry about the clean up later. If Wendy keeps pissing people off, can she really expect her money, power, and privilege to insulate her from a bullet? And even if she does manage to survive, will she really be able to do enough good to bury the bad she’s already assembled? If she can save her life, can she also save her soul? When Part 2 hits, we’ll finally hear how much “Ozark” has still to say. The beginning of “The Beginning of the End”—the inevitable title of “Ozark’s” Season 4 premiere—flashes forward to a scene still not put in context by the time Part 1 comes to a close. Marty and Wendy are driving down the road, accompanied by their children, Charlotte and Jonah, as well as the smooth voice of Sam Cooke singing “Bring It On Home To Me.” A meeting with the FBI is mentioned. An event at their casino, the Missouri Belle, comes up.  A clock is put, presumably, on their time left in Missouri: only 48 hours to go. As is prone to happen in the rare moments when the Byrdes are feeling good about things, disaster strikes. A car-carrier trailer is in the wrong lane, heading straight for the family minivan. Marty jerks the steering wheel to avoid a head-on collision, but the abrupt swerve sends their vehicle out of control. The crumpled van settles off-road, upside-down somewhere near the woods, and an eerie presence creeps over the area. Source: indiewire.com

Domenica Feraud and the Movie Star

The Movie Star and Me (article published by Domenica Feraud, assistant on the Broadway production of "Sunday in the Park with George", 2016) on Medium.com (January 15, 2022)

He was a movie star (Jake Gyllenhaal?). I was an intern. The producer was my mentor (Jeanine Tesori?). I feel ashamed that seeing his name on a billboard or hearing his voice in a trailer can momentarily paralyze me. I remind myself how much I started to want him. That I spent a year and a half of my life convinced I was in love with him. I’d been interning for my mentor since I was 19, working on a total of six productions together. She had trusted me to care for Tony winners, promoted me to intern supervisor at my 20th birthday party, and believed in my writing when no one else did. I looked up and found the lead actor staring. He smiled at me, and I smiled back: he was the most famous person in the room yet he was the only one looking at me rather than through me. He’d ordered too much food and asked if I would join him for lunch. I declined, but he insisted, Come on. At least a salad? As the day wore on, I began to shiver in the air-conditioned room. He was in the middle of a scene when he ran over, placing his sweater on my bare legs. During lunch he confided, I’m glad I met you. Now I have a homie. I smiled, I’m your rehearsal homie and he shot back, Just in rehearsal? At the end of the day, we performed his big Act Two number for the director. Afterwards he looked my way, proclaiming, She’s fantastic. [...] Later the movie star whispered, Hi pretty, even though he was in the midst of a run-through. His fingers lingered on my skin, and my heart lurched. 

You must get guys hitting on you all the time, the movie star said. I shook my head, and he rolled his eyes, refusing to believe me. Insisting I live up to the image he had projected onto me. He grabbed my hand as we entered the studio, I’m stressed. And I like having you near me. I was mimicking his sleep patterns unknowingly: the word ‘fate’ teased the corners of my mind, like maybe this connection was larger than both of us. You should give into it. The flirting. It’s fun. That it was confusing and stressful, but that if I was also developing feelings for him? Unless, does it make you uncomfortable? he asked. And this is something I still beat myself up for: he gave me the opportunity to say, Yes it does. To say, I don’t like it when you grab my chin like I’m a doll or objectify me to the people we work with. But I hadn’t yet figured out it was natural to feel uncomfortable. Time had gone by, we’d built up a rapport, and I trusted him. So I said, No, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. And having spoken those words, I’ve wondered if I have a right to publish this essay. [...] He texted: We should hang out — just you and me. But this time I smiled, because he was awake too. He texted: Miss you and my smile grew. I showered quickly, agonized over which dress was the right dress. Rehearsal ended early. He caught me in the doorway, Are you going downtown? I nodded. I wish I could too. I just have this interview. Another nod, an understanding one. So I’m not gonna see you? He seemed disappointed, and I felt responsible, like I was somehow abandoning him. My mentor knew the movie star would be an insecure wreck, which was the last thing anyone needed. The show needed me. I walked to his dressing room and raised my fist to knock. I was debating whether this was a terrible idea when the door swung open, Hi. He smiled, providing all the encouragement I needed. He hugged me, You look beautiful. Let me look at you. I indulged him when he asked me to twirl around. He walked over, pulling me into his arms in front of everybody. I lauded, You were incredible! I’m so proud of you. He tightened his grip, his hands circling the bottom of my waist. Our noses were practically touching when his sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal?) approached to let him know she was leaving. He introduced me, leaving us alone when a flock of A-Listers came to find him. After a minute of small talk, she said she had to go home to her daughters. She seemed eager for our forced encounter to end. To be fair, she had probably met dozens of me. But to be fairer, shouldn’t she ask her brother to stop romancing interns? My phone lit up, the movie star: You looked very sexy tonight. Thank you for being there for me. I typed back: And you looked very handsome. Another text followed: We really need to spend time. Just you and me.  

The Times review was a rave. Ben Brantley tripped over his feet with praise, but the movie star kept his eyes downcast. He seemed happy to see me by intermission, You are so sexy. When do we get to be alone? During the second act, desire spread through my body for the first time. Everyone in that theatre had paid to see him, but he wanted me. It was an intoxicating realization, and it gave me the illusion that I was powerful. Once we were headed downtown, he unloaded: his performance hadn’t been as good, and the review I thought would make him happy had done the opposite. He now had to live up to the impossible standards Brantley had set for him. He looked me in the eye, the cerulean blue never ceasing to take my breath away. I was buttoning my coat when he suddenly took my face in his hands, and kissed me. He leaned his forehead against mine, I just had to kiss you. Somehow, the romance continued. Just when I thought he’d forgotten me, he would text: Hey you! My friends marveled as my phone lit up with his name. I played the game well, rarely initiating a conversation, prompting him to type: How come I don’t hear from you? Thirty-one days since our first kiss, we agreed to get together the Friday after Thanksgiving. I came back from Long Island early, asked what time we should meet. Hours later he replied that he was still in Vermont. When he texted the next day asking to meet up, I didn’t hesitate. My hair was straightened, my eyebrows plucked, my make-up delicately applied, my heart thumping as I rang the doorbell. 

Seeing him after a month of longing was painfully anti-climactic. He looked different, dark and brooding in a way I had previously only caught glimpses of. Conversation had always flowed in the busy rehearsal room, but now it felt forced. He didn’t waste much time, kissing me before I could sip my tea, maneuvering my body like we were performing a dance I was supposed to know the steps to. He backed me up against the fridge within seconds, swiftly moving us towards his bedroom, my top flung off before I could figure out how he’d done it. Things were moving too fast and my brain was trying to keep up. His hands were about to remove my bra and I felt scared by the ferocity of his desire but I didn’t know how to express any of it so I just stood there. Eventually my lips stopped kissing and he asked if everything was okay. This is totally embarrassing but I’m really hungry. I ran to my purse, pulling out a bag of dried edamame. I put my shirt on in between bites as he watched me with a bemused expression. He announced, You’re so different, and all I could think was: from who? He said: What’s on your mind? We were kissing earlier and then we stopped and… did you not want it? I could hear the same insecurities that had wracked him during rehearsal, and knew it was my job to make them evaporate. I wanted to kiss but not like that, not like I was an object. He was 35 and very experienced. I was just 23. His jeans were unbuttoned, his boxers pulled down, and as he maneuvered my body on top of his I realized that if he were to thrust upwards, we’d be doing something I wasn’t ready for. I blurted, I can’t have sex tonight. I could hear the irritation in his voice, Any particular reason? he asked. His tone changed: Of course. That’s totally ok. My breasts were still exposed when he turned to me: You know what’s on my mind? That you’re 23. And we met on the show and… did I somehow take advantage of things? When I looked at his face, I knew it was over. He made me promise I wouldn’t waste any more time before telling me he was glad we didn’t have sex that night. He stood abruptly: his flight was leaving early and he had to pack. My mother had cried when he’d texted confirming our date: everyone who heard the whirlwind tale thought we were meant to be. And now I’d ruined everything. Three months later, he texted: How are you? Hope all is well with you. I pinched myself until my skin was raw, certain I was dreaming. You haven’t seen the show! When I didn’t respond, he followed up with Have you? I admitted I had. Why didn’t you come say hi? I burst into the hysterical laughter of a woman who has justifiably gone insane. Weeks later I was having tea with an acquaintance when she brought up the movie star without knowing our history. Her friend was his publicist and was constantly putting out fires on his behalf. Apparently, he falls in love with these young interns and PAs on sight, pursues them obsessively, and then has some sort of freak out a month in and disappears. I felt like I was falling into an abyss, hearing about my life from someone else’s mouth. And people like my mentor probably tell themselves these young women are lucky, but I’m here to vehemently disagree. Because the aftermath that never ends? It isn’t worth the fairytale. Source: medium.com

Ben Brantley (October 25, 2016): Jake Gyllenhaal shines in a joyous ‘Sunday in the Park With George’, which opened in a gala performance on Monday night and runs only through Wednesday. Starring Mr. Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford, with a supporting cast that glows with top-drawer, Broadway-honed talent, this is one of those shows that seems destined to be forever spoken of with misty-eyed bragging rights by anyone who sees it. “I could look at her forever,” sings Mr. Gyllenhaal’s Seurat, as his model, Ms. Ashford’s Dot, sings in simple, stabbing harmony, “I could look at him forever.” Playing George (and George), the obsessive, intense misfit comes naturally to Mr. Gyllenhaal. (Did you see him in “Nightcrawler”?) But here he also demonstrates both the radiant, centered stillness that can anchor a crowded stage — a clarity within opacity — and, who knew, a voice of richly flexible timbre that confidently elicits the most delicate shades of passion and despair. At the end of their final, magnificently sung duet, “Move On,” about getting beyond the pettiness and obstacles of daily life, Mr. Gyllenhaal and Ms. Ashford shared the most rapt and embracing smiles I think I’ve ever seen on a stage. The idea to cast Gyllenhaal came from Jeanine Tesori, composer of "Fun Home" and an artistic adviser at City Center. The cast also features Phylicia Rashad, Phillip Boykin, and Carmen Cusack, who dined next to Domenica Feraud. Source: nytimes.com

Matt Damon (Oh, Darling) video

Matt Damon (Oh, Darling!) video

Ben Affleck says Matt Damon helped save his career after his bad ‘Justice League’ experience, calling Damon "a principal influence" on the types of roles he strives for now. “I want to do the things that would bring me joy. Then we went and did ‘Last Duel’ and I had fun every day on this movie. I wasn’t the star, I wasn’t likable. I was a villain. I wasn’t all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn’t chasing.” Ben Affleck co-wrote “The Last Duel” with Matt Damon and Nicole Holofcener, and he also was featured in a supporting role as Count Pierre d’Alençon. The Ridley Scott-directed film, based on actual events and adapted from Eric Jager’s 2004 book The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France, follows Marguerite as she refuses to stay silent when Le Gris denies her claims of the violent assault. The men soon participate in a trial by combat, where they duel to the death. Damon added that he knew the film would be compared to the MeToo movement, saying, “it certainly feels like a movie that’s relevant today.” While Affleck has vowed not to return to the lows of “Justice League,” he will be reprising his role as Batman in the upcoming tentpole “The Flash.” Source: variety.com

In a new interview for Keep It! podcast, Minnie Driver talked about running into Matt last year and having a conversation with him for the first time in over 20 years. Minnie said that she ran into Matt, his wife Luciana, and their family at the beach in 2020. “I did see Matt Damon on the beach and I had not had a conversation with him, seriously, since we made the film,” she said (via People magazine). “That was last summer and it was actually very nice to see him, and his kids, and his wife and it all felt quite middle-aged actually, which was reassuring.” “I feel like so much of the folly of youth went on with our initial relationship, like it was amazing yet tabloidy,” she added. “So that was nice to just have sort of a middle-aged conversation about the weather and stuff.” Her portrayal of the outspoken Skylar opposite Matt Damon in the movie "Good Will Hunting" brought her fame, and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Source: www.people.com

Now about 30 years into his firing-on-all-cylinders career, Matt Damon, having starred in five Best Picture Oscar nominees, including the 2007 winner The Departed, the Oscar-winning screenwriter has continued to shine where so many of the stars he rose through the ranks of Hollywood with have stumbled—in the personal department. A few obvious things have contributed to his status as a 99-percent scandal-free celebrity (you have to have never spoken out loud to not make any negative headlines), a lot of which can be ascribed to a combination of fate and luck. But word on the street is that he really is a stand-up husband, father, humanitarian and movie star, meaning he actually meets the fates halfway by bringing admirable behavior to the table. Then there's Damon's actual marriage, which has also long since defied the stingy romantic odds allowed to most movie stars. 

The actor himself has said that marrying a "civilian" has helped keep his life private and the sailing smooth. But really, he shouldn't sell himself short—plenty of stars have been blessed with that dynamic and then totally screwed it up. "It's really sex and scandal that moves those magazines, and there's nothing scandalous about a guy who's married and has kids," Damon told The Guardian. "If they come outside where I live, they are going to die of boredom—there's just nothing really going on that would sell in a magazine." Kent Damon (Matt's father) died at 74 in 2017 following complications from multiple myeloma, a rare blood disease that affects bone marrow. "Some people are lying when they say they want to go with their families, but I think Matt actually really does like his family—his lovely wife and his four daughters," Tina Fey informed GQ magazine. "I won't be Matthew McConaughey," Damon told Vanity Fair in 1998. "I'm not as good-looking as him. I'm certainly never going to be anyone's sex symbol." He couldn't have been wronger about that, of course, but—unlike all of the smart choices he's made to get him to this point in his enviable life—that part wasn't up to him. Source: www.eonline.com

Bipolar Boom in the USA, Matt Damon (The Informant, Suburbicon), Gender Roles study

The Bipolar Boom: "In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to people not in the mental health system.” Robert Post added: “Right now, fifty years after the advent of antidepressant drugs, we still don’t really know how to treat bipolar depression. We need new treatment algorithms that aren’t just made up.” Although “bipolar” illness is a diagnosis of recent origin, first showing up in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1980 (DSM-III), medical texts dating back to Hippocrates contain descriptions of patients suffering from alternating episodes of mania and melancholia. Jules Baillarger, dubbed this illness la folie à double forme. In his 1969 book, Manic Depressive Illness, George Winokur at Washington University in St. Louis treated unipolar depression and bipolar illness as separate entities." 

"Today, according to the NIMH, bipolar illness affects one in every forty adults in the United States, and so, before we review the outcomes literature for this disorder, we need to try to understand this astonishing increase in its prevalence. Psychotropic drugs—both legal and illegal—have helped fuel the bipolar boom. In 2003, former NIMH director Lewis Judd and others argued that many people suffer “subthreshold” symptoms of depression and mania, and thus could be diagnosed with “bipolar spectrum disorder.” There was now bipolar I, bipolar II, and a “bipolarity intermediate between bipolar disorder and normality,” one in every four adults now falls into the catchall bipolar bin, this once-rare illness apparently striking almost as frequently as the common cold. Four million American adults under sixty-five years old are on SSI or SSDI today because they are disabled by mental illness. One in every fifteen young adults (eighteen to twenty-six years old) is “functionally impaired” by mental illness." —"Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America" (2010) by Robert Whitaker.

Soderbergh wanted The Informant! to go down the rabbit hole of Whitacre's mystifying mind. As Damon embodies him, he seems the sunniest symbol of corporate America and middle America: smart, pleasant, undemonstrative, with an eccentric wife (Melanie Lynskey) and two kids. But we get the earliest glimpses of Mark's gift for fooling people, and perhaps himself, in the movie's voiceover, in which Mark wanders blithely into logical cul-de-sacs and exotic trivia: The whole movie is Mark's brainscan. It's shot and acted in a bland style that, you only eventually realize, is deeply askew, and darkly, corrosively satirical. What game, exactly, is Whitacre playing? Whose side is he on? Damon is superb as a portentously smart guy who comes across as rather dim. Is Whitacre a knight in shining armor, a compulsive liar, playing secret agent or plagued by mental illness? 

Or is he all of the above? With his earnest demeanor and straightforward delivery, Damon convincingly obfuscates Whitacre's true motives. We don't question his veracity as much as try to muddle through it. A big part of the fun is piecing together the puzzle that is Whitacre. In a strange but fascinating touch, Damon voices his inner monologue. Often, his thoughts — an inane stream of consciousness — seem wholly unrelated to what's going on around him, which adds an intriguing absurdist quality to an already quirky tale. We come to realize Whitacre is the least reliable narrator in an already slippery setting. Source: time.com

Matt Damon famously had a 3 year relationship with Winona Ryder and even Courtney Love in an occasion was jokingly contemplating to reach out to Damon. The Hole singer labeled Damon as "old school". Did Damon's marriage to Luciana Bozán develop from love at first sight? "I don't know if that's me revising the initial memory, imbuing it with all the subsequent emotion that I felt and all the experiences that we've had since then," Damon told Macleans Canada magazine in 2011. "I feel like if I'm honest, that there was a halo of light around her and I absolutely knew that moment had changed my life before I even spoke to her, but I don't know whether or not that's revisionism." However their relationship began, it's clear that they were meant to be together! Source: www.macleans.ca

A recent study published in the journal Psychological Reports (December 7, 2021) found out that traditional gender norms continue in dating culture for Millennials, with men almost always paying the whole bill on first dates and paying more than women for subsequent dates. Gender role attitudes had little to do with actual practice, but did influence payment expectations. Heterosexual dating behavior is arguably quite gendered. Men and women rely on their gender role concepts to guide how to behave in such situations. Women tend to assume a reactive or “gatekeeper” role in romantic relationships, while men adopt a more active role and initiate the first move. In the context of traditional dating, a man would be expected to ask out a woman, make plans, pay for expenses, and suggest more intimacy, whereas a woman’s role would be to accept or reject his advances. Despite strong promotions of equality and diversity in the 21st century, with millennials witnessing these movements more so than any other generation, it is possible gender role differences persist in romantic dating. In this work, Hao Wu and colleagues explored sex differences. A total of 552 heterosexual college students were recruited from a public, southeastern university in the United States. The overwhelming majority of participants (i.e., 97%) reported a yearly income of $25,000 USD or less. The majority of participants were Caucasian and Christian (81% and 70% respectively). All the participants completed a measure test examining attitudes toward traditional masculinity, assessing for both machismo (e.g., characterized by aggressiveness) and caballerismo (e.g., characterized by chivalry). Participants also responded to items exploring attitudes toward women (e.g., “A woman should be as free as a man to propose marriage” vs “Women should worry more about becoming good wives and mothers”). 

Then, participants completed a shortened version of the Bem Sex Role inventory, exploring their masculine and feminine traits (i.e., instrumentality vs. expressivity). Wu and colleagues found that men almost always paid the entire bill on first dates and continued paying significantly more so in subsequent dates. On average, participants also expected men to pay more for both first and subsequent dates, though this effect was less pronounced among women. Men expected the male partner to pay on dates more so than women did. As well, “the more individuals embraced antifeminism and positive masculinity attitudes, the more they would expect the male partner to pay for first and subsequent dates.” Overall, these findings reveal a gendered pattern in dating payment behaviors and expectations among millennials, suggesting that despite the continued support for egalitarianism in the workplace, many are returning to conventional ideologies regarding gender roles. The study, “Gender Roles in the Millennium: Who Pays and Is Expected to Pay for Romantic Dates?”, was authored by Hao Wu, Shanhong Luo, Annelise Klettner, Tyler White, and Kate Albritton. Source: www.psypost.org

MATT DAMON - THE STAR WHO SLIPPED: In 2013, studios still loved him, but Matt Damon struggled at the box office lately, falling 13 points in the Valuable Stars Ranking according with the Box Office Mojo numbers. What happened? Some of it simply couldn’t have been helped—in part, he has been progressively supplanted by new stars in their prime, like Jennifer Lawrence—but Damon also hit a rough patch with his fracking movie Promised Land that Damon co-wrote, the lowest-grossing wide-release movie of his career. At an anemic $7 million, this reteam with his Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant, went nowhere at the box office. Sadly, Damon’s hoped-for summer smash Elysium didn’t quite restore him: The expensive sci-fi vehicle was unable to crack $100 million at the box office and opened to a lower number than director Neill Blomkamp’s last movie, District 9... despite the fact that District 9 had no stars and Elysium had Damon. 

Downsizing (2018) was even a more sound failure at the box office, with worldwide losses over 20 millions with respect to its budget. Matt Damon's Paul Safranek is like the hero of a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges film of 75 years ago, an ordinary man who has a certain sort of greatness thrust upon him. Ngoc Lan is Paul’s tart-tongued angel of mercy. Her “what kind of fuck you give me?” monologue is some kind of cinematic nadir. Paul’s dilemma becomes the choice represented to Ngoc Lan—to stay in a dying world and alleviate suffering, however insignificant that impact might seem, or retreat from messy humanity, chasing a perfect future? The social commentary of Downsizing and the satiric tone interested him. Damon turned down the lead role in 2016's award-winning drama Manchester By The Sea to do Downsizing because he wanted to work with Alexander Payne. Damon missed out on the possibility of having won an Oscar for it. 

Damon explained his reasoning: "When Payne gave me the script, I felt it was a completely original story. It is this kind of crazy, digressive left turn it takes in the middle of the movie, and I get to Norway and am in love with a one-legged Vietnamese political dissident." Asked about the current Trump presidency: "For me, it is just about trying to get through this presidency without this behaviour becoming normalised, because we have to return to our sense of decency. We have to have a sense of shame," Damon  stated. Still, Damon is a solid, hard-working star with a high studio rating, and he also has a high likability score, made all the more impressive owing to his potentially polarizing activist work for liberal causes. (Just compare him to Sean Penn, who’s got one of the lowest likability ratings on this list.) As a celebrity, Damon is an unshowy presence who’s hardly blowing up Twitter, but that’s part of what people appreciate about him: Unlike his occasionally polarizing cohort Ben Affleck, Damon really does seem unconcerned with his celebrity status. Source: vulture.com

The Suburbicon script was originally was originally written by the Coen brothers back in the late 1980s. Clooney tweaked it, politicised it; folding it in with a project he was developing about a true-life crime in Levittown, Pennsylvania. Matt Damon plays Gardner Lodge, one of Cold War milquetoast men, so underwritten that not even the actor seems to figure him out. At some point we twig that this is a movie about an insurance scam gone awry, featuring a cash-strapped husband who buckles under pressure. Audiences will likely be disappointed by the surprisingly dark character arc that Damon and the film’s script delivers. There’s little-to-no change in Damon’s character over the course of the film, which are particularly disappointing and weak points. It’s no spoiler to reveal that there’s no Hollywood happy ending for the good people of Suburbicon. A film’s character is its fate, after all, and it is clear from the outset that the whole town is damned. Clooney’s film is here on a mission to tear down the facade and reveal the American horror within. It wants us to rejoice in the destruction; to sit back and laugh as the bonfire burns. 

Julianne Moore gives a perfectly judged comic performance as a Barbara Stanwyck-like femme fatale, whose only drawback is that she is so utterly dimwitted. Damon is increasingly creepy and downright chilling as the repressed family man whose handsome features seem almost putrefied with self-loathing and who dreams of living on the beach in Aruba. Matt Damon shared he had resorted to "spanking" himself to make a scene with Julianne Moore look more believable in 'Suburbicon'. Damon revealed: "We had a good ping pong scene together. That was not dull at all. I actually bruised myself. Like, we realised the way the shot was, it looked like I was hitting her if I hit myself. And so I really was spanking myself." Clooney wants to both indulge and critique the vile, amoral stupidity of his characters, to draw us into a moral dead zone that might prove eye-opening. But it would require a filmmaker of either greater intellectual distance or tonal finesse to illuminate the toxic, ever-present legacy of white supremacy rather than merely restaging it, or to turn this kind of cut-rate misanthropy into art. Source: latimes.com

Matt Damon said about Suburbicon's message: “A lot of us are angry—angry at ourselves, angry at the way the country is going, and angry at the way the world is going". In review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Suburbicon has just an approval rating of 28%. Some of the nicest thing the negative reviews had to say about this misfire: "Suburbicon is not only unfunny, a bad sign for a black comedy, but deep-dyed dislikable. It’s the disastrous result of exhuming an old unproduced Coen brothers script about murder and perversity, then combining the film noir material with a facile denunciation of white racism in 1950s suburbia. These two plot elements have no organic connection with one another, though they do share a tone that manages to be simultaneously lurid, self-congratulatory, loftily scornful and utterly lifeless. Clooney's film eschews basic logic and didn't elicit enough laughs." —Wall Street Journal

"This startling misfire is a tonal disaster from start to finish. Part of the tonal problem here is one of deeply unlikable characters, something that the Coens excel at but other directors, even collaborators of theirs, have difficulty managing. The toggling between Depraved White Rot (Damon’s Lodge and his sister-in-law Maggie, played by Julianne Moore, having concocted a staggeringly crass murder scheme) and the dignity of the black family being subjected to all manner of torment often feels rather arbitrary. Even the great Robert Elswit’s cinematography work here feels uninspired. Of course, it all comes back to the flaws of a director unable to figure out how to convey the story in an interesting way. Suburbicon is shockingly unfunny, mostly due to the leaden, shapeless direction of it all but also due to the stilted performances from Damon and Moore that never seem to coalesce in tone or character. They’re lifeless. Maybe purposefully? As a commentary on dull white middle America? That’s possible, but not entertaining in any way." —RogerEbert.com