America's national epic is reflected poetically in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938, and it was described by Edward Albee as "the greatest American play ever written." Our Town contains the snapshots of bygone days, cracker-barrel philosophies, homespun homilies, good-natured ironies, the hints of pain caused by epiphanies, and that climax which brings a welling to your eyes despite yourself. It contains us. The Stage Manager is knowing and vigilant. With his spectacles perched on the tip of his nose and a vaguely distracted air, he stills looks imposing. He appears to have lived every vicissitude of life. Such is his air of decency and authority that you find yourself hoping he deems you worthy. George Gibbs, the youthful hero, is an all-American boy. His heart is in the right place, even if he must occasionally be reminded of just where that place is. He’s handsome, and when caught up in the spell of love, he croons; you wouldn’t tune a piano to it, but he’s sincere. Later, when George escorts his sweetheart, Emily, to the drugstore for an ice cream soda, the Stage Manager takes on the persona of Mr. Morgan, who crafts the fountain treats for the youngsters. When it turns out that George has forgotten his pocket money at home, he refuses to accept the boy’s gold watch as collateral for the debt: “I’ll trust you ten years, George—not a day over.” You sense affection in the older man and, equally, respect in the younger; the mutuality is warming. The old man has acted for Michael Curtiz, Robert Wise, Richard Brooks, Robert Rossen, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese. He has lent his voice to Doc Hudson in the Pixar movie "Cars," teaching Lightning McQueen that "life isn't about the destination but about the journey."
You could think of him in the company of legends as Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart. The young man is making a name for himself, but he keeps getting compared to Marlon Brando and James Dean. The young man has just turned thirty, has been married for six years, and has three children. The older man is seventy-eight, with his forty-fifth anniversary coming up and five grown daughters and a pair of grandkids with whom to celebrate it. The old guy is serious, a World War II vet who attended Kenyon College and the Yale School of Drama on the GI Bill; he’s raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity and served as president of the Actors Studio. The older man is Paul Newman, playing the Stage Manager in the Westport County Playhouse production of Our Town, at the Booth Theater on Broadway in October 2003. And the younger man, you know him too: Paul Newman, playing George Gibbs in the same play for NBC in September 1955.
For fifty years, on-screen and off, Paul Newman vividly embodied certain tendencies in the American male character: earnest and roguish, sly and determined, brave and vulnerable. He was equally at home on Hollywood soundstages, in theatrical workshops, in the pits of racetracks, and especially on the blessedly raucous fields and in the log cabins and swimming holes of the camps he built and maintained for seriously ill children. The world was his for the claiming—and he claimed only the bit that he felt was reasonably due to him, and he gave back more, by far, than he ever took. Newman had an intense discipline that demanded he earned, through sheer perseverance, a place alongside the Method gods Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. He was ultimately the one true superstar to emerge from the original Actors Studio generation, the most popular Stanislavskyan actor in American screen history.
Pauline Kael on her review of Hud (1963): "Paul Newman's range isn’t enormous; he can’t do classics. But when a role is right for him, he’s peerless. Newman imparts a simplicity and a boyish eagerness to his characters. We like them but we don’t look up to them. Even when he plays a bastard, he’s not a big bastard—only a callow selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he’s not—a dumb lout. But you don’t believe it when he plays someone more perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. In his personal life, his likableness seems infectious and it's difficult not to like Paul Newman. But Hud is just possibly the most completely schizoid movie produced anywhere anytime. Hud is much of an anti-Western and I think it's also an anti-American film, yet so astutely made and such a mess that it is redeemed by its fundamental dishonesty."
As he would bemoan for the rest of his life, director Martin Ritt—along with screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., adapting Larry McMurtry’s 1961 debut novel Horseman, Pass By—had intended to make a film taking the side of Homer Bannon and the impressionable Lon (Brandon De Wilde), Homer’s grandson and Hud’s nephew. “Hud was meant to be the ultimate heel, condemned to a life of loneliness and alcoholism for his harsh arrogance,” Ritt said at the American Film Institute in 1974. “If I’d been near as smart as I thought I was,” Ritt added, “I would have seen that Haight-Abshbury was right around the corner. The kids were very cynical; they were committed to their own appetites, and that was it.” “Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire,” Homer says in decrying Hud, and the same is true of our cinema. Shades of gray were on their way in, and with Hud, Paul Newman’s cold blue eyes served as the headlights on the dark road to come. Source: online.ucpress.edu
Paul Newman was visiting Maynard Morris, the MCA agent who got him a role for “Ice from Space” TV episode in 1952 (from the sci-fi show Tales of Tomorrow) and the agent’s next appointment was already waiting for him in the reception area, a young alluring actress named Joanne Woodward. Morris introduced the two by way of apologizing to her for running late. As Woodward later remembered it, “I had been making the rounds, and I was hot, sweaty, and my hair was all stringy. Morris introduced me to a pretty-looking young man in a seersucker suit, all pretty like an Arrow collar ad, and said, ‘This is Paul Newman,’ and I hated him at first sight, but he was so funny, he disarmed me.” Newman said his first reaction to her was to think: “Jeez, what an extraordinarily pretty girl.” Woodward had been spotted by a scout for MCA in a Neighborhood Playhouse showcase and brought into the agency as a client of a young agent named John Foreman, who was handling the television careers of new actors. He got her a series of roles on TV—in episodes of Robert Montgomery Presents, and Goodyear Television Playhouse; she played Ann Rutledge in a five-part series about Abraham Lincoln on Omnibus that required that she travel to Hollywood. “I didn’t have enough money to rent a car,” she later boasted. “Can you imagine being in California with no car?” In New York, Joanne had reportedly dated a lot of young men, even if she wasn’t exactly the type that was in vogue.
As they got to know each other during the rehearsals and downtime on Picnic, she came to seem to him an ideal girl. “I was shy, a bit conservative. It took me a long time to persuade her that I wasn’t as dull as I looked.” “Joanne and I have had difficult, mind-bending confrontations,” Newman told columnist Maureen Dowd many years later in The New York Times Magazine. “But we haven’t surrendered. I’ve packed up and left a few times, and then I realize I have no place to go, and I’m back in ten minutes.” “Being Mrs. Paul Newman has its good and bad days,” Joanne confessed to Good Housekeeping. “Obviously, since we’re still together, most of them have been good. But it hasn’t been easy, and I don’t think any valid relationship is.” Joan Collins (co-star of Newman and Woodward in Rally Around the Flag) once weighed in on their marriage. "I believe he was totally faithful to Joanne in the many years of their relationship in spite of the fact that many starlets, and even some stars were interested in more than just staring into his blue eyes." By "stars," she may have been referring to Marilyn Monroe, Piper Laurie or Sandra Dee.
As with Rachel Rachel (1968), Paul Newman demonstrated his loyalty by committing himself to Joanne Woodward’s work. Almost everything he would produce or direct going forward would include her. And he learned to accommodate her interests and moods, encouraging her love of ballet by giving her gifts of ballet-inspired artworks, and by helping her to fund a dance/theatre company of her own. Theirs would often be praised as a fairy-tale marriage. And perhaps because it contained and overcame some dark and perilous episodes, it was worthy of the name. Playwright A. E. Hotchner, who knew Paul Newman longer and better than almost anybody, assesed: “Paul was an unadorned man. He was simple and direct and honest and off-center and mischievous and romantic and very smart… He was the same man in 2008 that he was in 1956—unchanged, despite all the honors and the movie stardom.” —Paul Newman: A Life (2009) by Shawn Levy
The researcher Susan Shimanoff of San Francisco State University discovered that regret was the most common negative emotion, and the second most common emotion of any kind – after love. However instructive past regrets may be toward making better decisions in the future, imagining that we could be happier with someone else can burden an otherwise reasonable life or romantic relationship. As the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes in Monogamy (1996): ‘We are prone to think, erroneously, there should be someone else who could love us more, understand us better, or make me feel more sexually alive.’ Looking for someone ‘better’ may be particularly tempting today: with Internet and advertising finding its way into every nook and cranny of our consciousness, we are invited to hate what we love, and envy that which is not worth pursuing.
‘I don’t think individuals in the 1950s and ’60s tended to imagine a happier life with another romantic partner, at least in the sense that they could build a happier life with someone else,’ explained the historian Stephanie Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (2011): ‘I think they imagined that everyone else was happy with their lives, and that there was something wrong with them not being happy. Because the sitcoms and magazine articles of that era portrayed successful families as ones that followed a formula, and it looked easy to replicate.’ Yet, the idea of pursuing happiness, however compelling, can have a very high costs for parents and children. In a follow-up study I did with Philip Cowan – professor of psychology at the University of Berkeley – we found that estranged parents who didn’t divorce were more likely to eventually reconcile with their children than those who did. In my clinical experience, divorce can increase the risk of a more conflicted or distant parent-adult child relationship in multiple ways. As Deborah Levy writes in her memoir, The Cost of Living (2018): ‘Chaos is supposed to be what we most fear but I have come to believe it might be what we most want.’
The sociologist Allison Pugh found that first marriages of ‘moderately educated’ women (those with some college education) are twice as likely to break up in the first five years as those of women with college degrees. Sometimes we are in the midst of depression and have gotten feedback from a therapist or others that our mood is distorting our view of our relationship. Alternatively, it's good to make attempts to communicate more effectively with your partner, and those attempts probably will be well-received and will be able to change the perceived problems. Sadly, some relationships have to be brought to the brink of a breakup to get the attention of the other person. E Mavis Hetherington’s study of divorce For Better or For Worse (2002) found that 25 per cent of men were completely surprised when their wives served them with divorce papers.
One of Émile Durkheim’s central insights in the late 19th century: that in removing the rituals, traditions, roles and expectations that had guided desire for centuries, we also removed the ability to know that we had arrived and could stop trying. ‘As soon as there is nothing to stop us, we cannot stop ourselves,’ he wrote. ‘Beyond the pleasures that we have experienced, we imagine and yearn for others, and if one should happen to have more or less exhausted the possible, one dreams of the impossible – one thirsts for what is not.’ However constraining and outdated are social roles, they at least provided clarity of whether we should stop and smell the roses – or exhaust ourselves in the pursuit of the sweeter ones that might be just over the hill. So the endless pursuit of happiness can produce the opposite result: rather than leading us to a deeper, more meaningful life, we just end up getting one more thing we don’t really need. Source: aeon.co
"Joanne gave him his confidence," says Ethan Hawke in The Last Movie Stars (2022). "Joanne taught him to believe in himself. Joanne taught him to love himself. When somebody asks her why their marriage worked, she said, 'There's my ego, and there's his ego, and there's our ego. And when we're both in service of our ego, we can do anything.'" "Their relationship never stopped growing," said their daughter Clea. "Their art never stopped growing. They never stopped pushing themselves, finding new things that were interesting to them." Paul Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports car racing while Joanne Woodward teached theater classes. And together they were exceedingly generous philanthropists. According to Clea, they gave away "between $700,000,000 and a billion dollars. I don't really know. It's a lot. And the funny thing is, is that they probably wouldn't want anybody to know."
Hawke says, "I feel like we all need heroes that show the end of our life as a possibility of being the best part of our life." What Hawke is getting at in this documentary isn’t how to act but how to live as a Hollywood actor—how to remain artistically substantial and socially responsible, and how to sustain family relationships and friendships, all the while taking part in the machine and existing relentlessly in the public eye. For this, as the documentary reveals, there is no method. "I'm running out of steam," Newman said in 1968. "Wherever I look, I find parts reminiscent of Cool Hand Luke or Hud or Fast Eddie. Christ, I played those parts more than once. It's not only dangerous to repeat yourself, it's damned tiresome."
Besides, he had discovered racing and turned pro in 1977. He was fifty-two years old, and acting was now something he did on the side. Being a car racer he could use it to become the actor he'd always wanted to be, free of all the smirking boyo stuff and freeze-framed machismo. If he ain't Hud, ain't Fast Eddie, ain't Cool Hand Luke, ain't Butch Cassidy, who is he? Who is Paul Newman? "I don't know," he says. "You can't not absorb some of those character traits. You try to separate those little fragments you've created. The toughest role is playing Paul Newman. My own personality is so vapid and bland, I have to go steal the personalities of other people to be effective."
Nominated eight times for Academy Awards in the best-actor category, Newman won only once, for "The Color of Money" (1986), in which he reprised the role of "Fast" Eddie Felson that he originated in 1961's "The Hustler." When Newman finally won an Oscar in 1986 for "The Color of Money," it was neither his nor director Martin Scorsese's best effort and was seen by some observers as compensation for having been overlooked in "The Hustler." However, Newman didn't hide his disappointment that filmmaking in Hollywood had abandoned the "theater of the mind" for the "theater of the senses."
A new book, “Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,” will be published in October. Ben Brusey, publishing director, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Suzanne Smith, vice-president and director of foreign rights at Knopf Doubleday, for publication on 27th October. Knopf will simultaneously publish in the US. The publisher describes The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man as the “insightful, revealing and surprising memoir of perhaps the greatest movie star of the past 75 years”. Its synopsis reads: “Before he died in 2008, Newman had been at work on this project for five years. Newman recounts in detail his often traumatic childhood, his teenage insecurities, his youthful failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals – Marlon Brando and James Dean – his first marriage, his greatest film roles, his drinking, his philanthropy, his professional racing car career, the death of his son Scott, and his desire for his daughters to understand the truth about their father.
“Perhaps the most moving material in the book centres on Newman’s relationship with Joanne Woodward and their deep love for each other. Additional voices that run throughout the book include Newman’s childhood friends, Navy buddies, family members and film and theater collaborators. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man provides a new understanding of a man many admired but few really knew – from the perspective of the man himself. Newman died of lung cancer in 2008 at the age of eighty-three. Out of all his achievements, he valued his charity work the most. In his later years, Newman said: “I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried to be a part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, and tried to extend himself as a human being.” That vision and his efforts toward it resonate today, through his legacy, carried on by his daughters and their respective philanthropy and activism. And through Joanne, his partner in this work, with whom he completed fifty years of marriage before his death. On their fiftieth wedding anniversary, Paul Newman asserted: “Joanne, being married to you has been the joy of my life.” Source: www.thebookseller.com
This year’s Emmy Award nominees were announced, with “Squid Game” earning 14 nods, the most ever for a foreign-language show. The 74th Emmy Awards will be broadcast live at 8 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 12 on NBC and will stream live for the first time on Peacock TV. Best Drama Nominees shows: “Better Call Saul” (AMC), “Ozark” (Netflix), “Severance” (Apple TV+), “Squid Game” (Netflix) and “Stranger Things” (Netflix). Best Comedy Nominees shows: “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO), “Hacks” (HBO Max), “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon), “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu) and “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+). Best Actor in Drama: Jason Bateman, “Ozark”, Brian Cox, “Succession”, Lee Jung-jae, “Squid Game”, Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul” and Adam Scott, “Severance”. Best Actor in Comedy: Donald Glover, “Atlanta”, Nicholas Hoult, “The Great”, Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”, Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building” and Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso”. Best Actress in Drama: Laura Linney in “Ozark”, Melanie Lynskey, “Yellowjackets”, Jodie Comer, “Killing Eve” and Reese Witherspoon, “The Morning Show”. Directing for a Drama Series: Jason Bateman, “Ozark” (“A Hard Way to Go”), Ben Stiller, “Severance” (“The We We Are”), Lorene Scafaria, “Succession” (“Too Much Birthday”), Hwang Dong-hyuk, “Squid Game” (“Red Light, Green Light”), Karyn Kusama, “Yellowjackets” (“Pilot”) and Mark Mylod, “Succession” (“All the Bells Say”). Source: nytimes.com
Jason Bateman made his first important contribution as a film director in The Family Fang (2015), which opens with a sequence that is one of the most provocative introductions to a movie I’ve ever seen. The story is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson. Bateman (Juno, The Gift) and Nicole Kidman (The Hours, Dogville) play as the siblings Annie and Baxter Fang, both artists, somewhat successful but struggling with their art: she’s a moderately successful actress who’s appeared in a bunch of crap and a tampon comercial, and he’s a wunderkind novelist whose third book-in-progress is stuck in low gear while he is mired in writer’s block. Bateman is his usual splendidly sharp but understated self; Kidman matches him beat for beat in a way that she doesn’t often get the chance to do. Their warm but contentious relationship is the box out of which emerges a tale of the existential crisis of a whole family, but not in any way you’ve seen before, one that explores the boundaries between being true to oneself and being a self-obsessed freak when other people need you. It asks how much you may reasonably draw on other people as the inspiration for your art. It’s not funny in a way that makes you laugh out loud, but funny in a way that makes you uncomfortable. That is a place that few movies dare to go. Source: www.flickfilosopher.com
When Jason Bateman accepted his Emmy award for his work as director/producer in Ozark, Bateman began to tear up as he thanked his family. "I would like to say specifically though to my wife, my two daughters – Amanda, Franny and Maple – without you, none of it would be enjoyable and it probably wouldn’t be possible. I love you more than I even tell you I do. And I’ll be home for kisses so don’t go to bed. Amanda, pop a mint, I’m going to come give you yours in about five minutes." He called his family the "three most important people" in his life and gave them credit for allowing him to be the best actor/director he can be, saying that because of their love and support he doesn't mail-in his performances when he must be away from them.
"That keeps me from taking any of this for granted or just doing it half-assed," he said. In his usual deadpanning style, when asked if Bateman could make a sequel to any movie what would it be? Bateman said, not missing a bit, Teen Wolf 3 in 3D. Jason Bateman's career dates officially from a Golden Grahams advert in 1979, when he was just 10 (he’s now 53). He talks about his mother's influence – she was a Pan Am flight attendant, originally from the UK. If certain things are hilarious to him, Bateman explains that's because “my mother is British and everything is dry to her”. His father would be the more obvious role model in professional terms. Kent Bateman was a writer and director, and the producer of the 1987 fantasy sequel Teen Wolf Too, the lead role that sealed his son’s teen-idol status as nerdy, unthreatening and very 80s at once. Source: people.com
In Teen Wolf Too, it was explained that Bateman's character Todd Howard was the first cousin of Michael J. Fox’s Scott Howard from the original. Todd Howard was recruited by Scott’s former high school basketball coach Finstock (inexplicably now a college boxing coach) in the hopes that Todd shared the family “werewolf gene” that made Scott Howard such an excellent werewolf basketball player. However, first cousins only have a 12.5% genetic similarity. So there was only a one-in-eight chance that Todd would be a werewolf like Scott. Teen Wolf Too is a 1987 American fantasy comedy film directed by Christopher Leitch, written by R. Timothy Kring, and starring Jason Bateman (his first film debut), John Astin, Estee Chandler and Kim Darby.
It is the sequel to Teen Wolf (1985). During his first boxing match, Todd has his second "wolf-out" to display his supernatural agility and strength and has a dramatic come from behind victory, thus earning the admiration of the students as well as the strict Dean Dunn (John Astin). With his newfound fame as the prodigy wolf it comes girls, top grades and even a car from the dean but as the year goes on, Todd realizes that he is losing his friends and self-respect. He seeks advice from his uncle, Scott's father, Harold Howard (James Hampton), who helps him come to terms with his responsibilities. Todd also reconnects with his nerdy girlfriend, Nicki (Estee Chandler), who helps him regain his focus on being humble. Source: blu-ray.com
Meant to Be by Emily Giffin will suck you right in. When Joe Kingsley, the son of an iconic American family, meets model Cate Cooper on a photo shoot in the Hamptons, it’s love at first sight. But Cate comes from the wrong side of the tracks and isn’t interested in becoming front-page news by dating Joe. Eventually, she gives in, and the two fall in love, but secrets from Cate’s past and a tragedy threaten to destroy their relationship. Out of the gate, you are charmed by Joseph "Joe" Kingsley, Jr., a lovable bachelor with a heap of expectations on his shoulders due to his family's name and prestige. The chapters alternate between Joe's perspective and of his romantic interest, Cate Cooper, a thoughtful, strong and effortlessly elegant model-turned-stylist. It's no secret that Giffin's novel was inspired by JFK, Jr.'s and Carolyn Bessette's love story; however, Giffin's creativity and insights take her characters to a new level. You will be left with insights on how two people from very different worlds can navigate differences, and how sometimes a couple's love story really is meant to be.
Inspired loosely by John F. Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette's ill-fated romance and set in '90s New York City, Meant to Be follows cool, blonde, model-turned-fashion stylist Cate Cooper and hunky Joe Kingsley, scion of the Kingsley family, and as close to American royalty as you can get. The pair have a glamorous, passionate romance, tailed by the ever-present paparazzi. (It sounds familiar?) Giffin spoke to EW about Meant to Be, modern icons, and how the '90s "feels like the last decade of innocence." Source: ew.com
"On the weekends, I would stay in my room with Pepper, listening to music, reading Judy Blume novels about other miserable kids, and flipping through my Bop and Tiger Beat magazines. I didn’t like boys in real life, but I had a robust lineup of celebrity crushes that included Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, and Donny Osmond. My hands-down favorite, though, was Joe Kingsley. Growing up, I’d always known who Joe was. A few years older than I was, he had a famous father who was killed in a failed space mission, and he lived on Fifth Avenue with his glamorous mother. [...] Joe laughed, his face lighting up, then looked directly into my eyes. I held his gaze, feeling a little light-headed. I’d met celebrities before, but no one near this famous—or handsome. Overwhelmed, I had to glance away for a second. When I looked back his way, he was still staring at me. “I’m Joe, by the way,” he said, extending his arm. I gave him a half smile, then shook his hand. “I’m Cate Cooper.” Joe looked smug as he gave me a wink. “Yep. I knew it. I never forget a face. Not one as pretty as yours, anyway.” It was the kind of line that usually sounded cheesy, but Joe’s delivery was so sincere that it disarmed me, and I could feel my heart flutter a little as I thanked him." —Meant to Be (2022) by Emily Giffin
Experts estimate that one in 10 Americans is dependent on alcohol and other drugs, and behaviors like gambling, overeating and playing video games can be addictive in similar ways, Once, addictions were viewed as failures of character and morals, and society responded to drunks and junkies with shaming, scolding and calls for more “will power.” This proved spectacularly ineffective, although, truth be told, many addicts do quit without any form of medical treatment. Nevertheless, many do not, and in the mid-20th century, the recovery movement, centered around the 12-Step method developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, became a godsend. Marc Lewis, a neuroscientist and psychologist, is the author of a new book: “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease.” Lewis’s argument is actually fairly simple: The disease theory, and the science sometimes used to support it, fail to take into account the plasticity of the human brain. Of course, “the brain changes with addiction,” he writes. “But the way it changes has to do with learning and development—not disease.” All significant and repeated experiences change the brain; adaptability and habit are the brain’s secret weapons. The dangerous changes wrought by addiction are not, however, permanent. Each of these people, Lewis argues, had a particular “emotional wound” the substance helped them handle, but once they started using it, the habit itself eventually became self-perpetuating and in most cases ultimately served to deepen their wounds. Over time, people who are addicted become trapped in the moment-to-moment experiences and disconnected from their past and future. Source: www.salon.com
Throughout her body of work, Laura Linney exudes a quality at once familiar and slightly hard to place, with a dimpled smile that can slide easily from delight to menace and a contralto voice that can be adjusted to the scale of the medium. Still, when it comes to why she became an actor, she has no answer. “I don’t know if I really want to know,” she says. “Maybe when I’m 80 I’ll look at it. Why I decided on acting? For me, it’s always been about a connection that I don’t find anywhere else, possibly.” About the good appraisal Ozark has received, Linney remarks: “It’s a miracle when anything works. There’s a difference between successful and good. Something can be great and nobody sees it.” By the end of the third season, Wendy gives up her older brother Ben to the Navarro Cartel. Although this was done to protect her family, Wendy proves herself to be the ultimate anti-hero of the show. Yet, she is still someone the audience wants to root for.
"I’m having real withdrawal from Ozark. Everything about it worked. All the right people were in the right positions. Everyone had a similar viewpoint. Everyone had a similar work ethic. I loved being in Atlanta. It was an unbelievable crew. Crews on television normally do not stay intact. Ninety percent of our crew stayed the entire time. What that does on a set, the safety that you feel, the unspoken communication, the ease, the comfort, and the fun that you have — I feel like I just landed in a pot of honey. I miss it a lot. Ultimately, Ozark was about our identity. Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Who are we as communities? Who are we as a country? Identity."
Why does Ozark’s Jason Bateman think audiences responded so positively to the dark drama? Bateman has his thoughts on why the show has struck a chord: "It’s great that Ozark it’s not black and white. That it’s not good vs. evil or villain vs. hero. That’s the satisfying takeaway from our show, and that’s what gives you the anxiety, that there’s a level of tangible and relatable conflict and confusion. You recognize that you might be saddled with the same type of push-pull based on mistakes. There’s not a ton of explosions and effects and overt violence in the show. Hopefully, what is unsettling about it is that it’s humanity pushed right to the edge of what you’re capable of justifying." Source: cinemablend.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling of Roe v. Wade "such an insult, a slap in the face to women." "There's no point in saying good morning, because it certainly is not one," she said. "This morning the radical Supreme Court is eviscerating women's rights and endangering their health and safety. Today the Republican-controlled courts achieve their extreme goal of repealing a woman's right to make their own health decisions." Former President Barack Obama criticized the decision, saying the high court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent but it "relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues -- attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans." Hillary Clinton wrote: "Today's Supreme Court opinion will live in infamy as a step backward for women's rights and human rights." Source: cnbc.com
The writer of the film Juno has referred to abortion state bans as a “hellish alternate reality”, adding that she wouldn’t write the same movie nowadays. “I don’t even know if I would have written a movie like Juno if I had known that the world was going to spiral into this hellish alternate reality that we now seem to be stuck in, it sucks so fucking bad,” Diablo Cody shared. During their first meeting, Juno and Mark Loring strike up an instant connection and friendship that builds throughout the film. Mark (Jason Bateman) is a grown-up version of Juno. Just like her, he's into all that counter culture stuff, and he's taken on an ironic detachment, just like Juno. It doesn't help Juno makes some barbed comments to Mark such as "What would The Melvins think? You are quite the sellout!"
Mark’s outfits throughout the film change according to where he is, mentally, in his marriage. His respetable clothes at the beginning of the film seem to be picked out by Vanessa, who favors a classical style. As the story progresses, Mark begins to dress in a more comfortable manner, opting for flannels and jeans before completely turning the page with a Soundgarden t-shirt layered over a long-sleeved shirt and a color scheme that complements Juno’s wardrobe. It can be said that Mark undergoes a negative character development, his underlying resentment towards Vanessa ruining his friendship with Juno at the end. So why is it until Juno comes into the picture that Mark finally chooses to break his silence? Back in the audio commentary of the film, Reitman and Cody comment that despite Mark and Juno having feelings for each other, Juno is in love with the idea of being an adult while Mark is in love with the idea of being young. And it isn’t until Mark reveals he’s leaving Vanessa that their worldviews clash and these feelings projected onto each other are unable to find any solid basis or hold, and they crumble. Source: medium.com
Netflix has released images from the final hours of Stranger Things, which drop July 1. Two episodes totaling nearly four hours make up Volume 2 of the drama’s fourth on the streamer. Episode 408 will clock in at 1 hour, 25 minutes, while 409 will run 2 hours, 20 minutes. Last week, Netflix released a teaser for the final s4 hours of the drama created by The Duffer Brothers. During Netflix’s Geeked Week, Ross Duffer said he and his brother can now put the young stars in a lot more danger. Season four, up until this point, has been markedly darker than several of the preceding seasons. While the show always had one foot in the macabre, season four has been even harsher on the harried Hawkinites. A lot of this horror can be attributed to this season's newly introduced enemy, the villainous Vecna.
A trait consistently found to have a negative correlation with enjoyment of watching a horror film is empathy (Tamborini et al, 1990; Johnston, 1995; Lynch & Martins, 2015). People who report through self questionnaire higher empathy tend to sympathize more with characters they see on screen who are in danger than people with lower empathy (Davis et al., 1987). Therefore, viewers who are very empathetic should have the most negative effects when watching horror movies and would be expected not to enjoy them. Consistent with this, a meta analysis of experiments using horror movies showed that empathetic concern was negatively correlated with enjoyment of frightening and violent media (Hoffner & Levine, 2005). These robust findings of high sensation seeking and low empathy predicting horror movie enjoyment have led to my hypothesis that scoring high on Dark Triad traits can also be used as a predictor for horror movie enjoyment. Low empathy and high sensation seeking are both tendencies found among the personality types of the Dark Triad. The Dark Triad was identified as such in 2002 by Paulhus and Williams as three personality variables that are distinct but have some overlap and are all considered anti-social. These three traits are psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. While narcissism and psychopathy were both originally identified as clinical personality disorders and identified as such in the DSMIV, they also exist at the subclinical level. Psychopathy is usually considered the most dangerous of the Dark Triad traits (Rauthman, 2012) Psychopaths by definition have low empathy (Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008; Mahmut, Homewood & Stevenson, 2008) and would therefore be less likely to empathize with victims in horror films. Psychopathy is of particular interest to the study of horror movies because of their noteworthy relationship with fear. Psychopaths are often characterized as having no fear (Hosker-Field, Gauthier & Book, 2016) Source: digitalcommons.bard.edu
As the 60th anniversary of Marilyn’s death approaches, she is once again in the headlines. All too often, however, the stories shed little light on the lady herself. In the Sunday Times, Rosamund Urwin explores what Marilyn means to us in 2022. “Few stars have cast such a long shadow. Andrew Wilson, a novelist and biographer whose next book is about the actress, said that this stems from her mystique, which allows fans to have their own view of who she was. Plain Norma Jeane Mortenson could go almost unnoticed, but then transformed into the movie goddess Monroe, the character she created, who was luminescent on screen. ‘She is so open for interpretation and reinterpretation — anyone can project anything they want onto Marilyn and get something back,’ Wilson said. ‘That’s the classic definition of a star.’ Wilson added that Monroe was ahead of her time, too.
‘She was one of the first stars of the public era who examined herself — almost having therapy in the full view of the public eye — making her a very modern celebrity,’ he said. ‘She was always asking, “What does it mean to be Marilyn Monroe?” Long viewed as a victim, Monroe’s life is also being re-appraised in light of the MeToo movement, Wilson said. ‘There was always this argument about was Marilyn a victim or a manipulator?’ he said. ‘It would be easy to interpret her as a victim of Hollywood at its worst, but at the same time, she was very savvy when it comes to business… She is one of those stars who resists binary interpretation, because she’s not “either, or”: she contains multitudes.’ Amy Greene, the wife of the late photographer Milton Greene and a friend of the actress, has spent six decades trying to make the case that Monroe was not a passive person. ‘She was never a victim… never in a million years,’ she told Vanity Fair. Source: themarilynreport.com
Ana de Armas is set to play Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, the adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 book. Norma Jeane Baker was Monroe’s real name purposefully misspelled by Oates with an extra “e” at the end of Jean. Director Dominik selected de Armas after almost a decade of trying to cast the lead role. Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts had reportedly been attached to the film, which was in development since 2010. De Armas snagged the role in 2019. Oates first conceived of the novel after seeing a photograph of Norma Jean Baker winning a beauty contest in California in 1941. Director Dominik knew that Cuban actress de Armas was “the one” to play Monroe after just a single audition. De Armas gushed to Vanity Fair that the opportunity to take on the legendary star is a career-making task.
“I knew I could do it. Playing Marilyn was groundbreaking, a Cuban playing Marilyn Monroe,” de Armas said in 2020. “I wanted it so badly. You see that famous photo of her and she is smiling in the moment, but that’s just a slice of what she was really going through at the time.” De Armas’ “Knives Out” co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, whose father Tony Curtis starred opposite Monroe in “Some Like It Hot,” praised de Armas’ portrayal, saying, “I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe it. Ana was completely gone. She was Marilyn.” De Armas revealed to Byrdie that she wore a bald cap to conceal her natural brunette shade while starring as the titular blonde bombshell. Dominik also called de Armas “fucking amazing” as Monroe, telling Screen Daily, “The one thing nobody’s going to complain about is Ana’s performance.” Dominik told Collider that he thinks “Blonde” will be “one of the 10 best movies ever made” since it’s about the human condition. “It tells the story of how a childhood trauma shapes an adult who’s split between a public and a private self. It’s basically the story of every human being, but it’s using a certain sense of association that we have with something very familiar, just through media exposure,” Dominik said. Blonde will be released on Netflix on September 23, 2022. Source: indiewire.com
Arthur Miller reminisced about Marilyn in an interview to Vanity Fair in 1991: “She was a lost child; she was also a tough character. As it turned out, she was tougher on herself than anybody else. She killed herself, finally. That’s how tough she was. And then when we broke up, I was left with the taxes. On both our salaries. I was dead broke by the time we parted. My plays were bringing in enough for the bread and butter. But I had alimony to pay. And I had to pay taxes on the place in Roxbury.” He looks somewhere into the middle distance. “So she came to New York to learn how to act. She felt she’d never acted. She got into the Actors Studio. I thought, I’m going to take this extraordinary child of nature and lead her to the light of day. And then I discovered you can’t play God.” Miller says, “I began to dream that with her I could do what seemed to me would be the most wonderful thing of all—have my work, and all that implied, and someone I just simply adored.”
“I thought I could solve it all with this marriage. I was very idealistic. And she was simply overwhelming. As I guess I was to her, for a while. She had so much promise. It seemed to me that she could be really a great kind of phenomenon. She could be a terrific artist; she was endlessly fascinating as a person; she was full of original observations. Crazy as a coot, but there wasn’t a conventional bone in her body. Her reaction when she was down was to lash out at foes imaginary and real. Her dependence on pills grew, as did her reliance on her Actors Studio gurus, Lee and Paula Strasberg. I saw the Strasbergs as poisonous and vacuous, almost instrumental in Marilyn’s dissolution. Because they helped to justify her worst self-defeating strategies. In order to continue to have power over her, they would justify anything. With a large dose of intellectualization. When, if they really had her welfare at heart, they’d have tried to draw her gently closer and closer to reality. And the reality was what she ultimately faced, which was a studio that fired her. Because she wouldn’t appear to make the film.
Had it been an ordinary situation on The Misfits, she probably would’ve come close to being fired then. ‘Cause we were up there on this dry lake, with some pretty big stars, sitting around for days at a time waiting for her to appear. Marilyn always—as I learned later—she would exhaust areas of her life. Simply exhaust them. And I was one of them. Then she’d go on. It's hard reading about her because you never can really figure her out. I don't think she had an integrated personality or knew what she wanted. Well, the whole idea of a domestic existence. I mean, I couldn’t live for too long in a tent and on the road. I have to have a steady domicile, and some peace and quiet, or I can’t work. And she wanted that, too, with part of her psyche. But she also wanted something that made that very difficult to have. Which was this power. Star power. Because the opposite was to be destroyed.” Source: vanityfair.com
Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge (2022) by film historian, critic, academic and biographer Joseph McBride, is a comprehensive, invaluable critical study of one of the most admired and enduring filmmaker-satirists of the post-World War II era. Wilder, born in what is now Poland in 1906, is best known for his Hollywood-made films, Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Irma La Douce (1963) and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). It would be difficult to make sense of popular culture in America over the course of several decades without taking Wilder’s efforts into account. Though an influential fixture in Hollywood, Wilder always saw himself as an outsider. Wilder’s films are full, McBride points out, of “hotel and train settings as his characters race from place to place, attempting to find their bearings.” His “bustling energy and impatience were a symptom of enduring anxiety over his rootless condition, his unconscious need to keep moving in order to avoid being trapped.” After an unstable upbringing, “and far more deeply after he fled Hitler in 1933 and emigrated to the United States, Wilder experienced the exile’s essential feeling of never quite belonging or knowing a firm identity, always having to be ready to move again, no matter how safe you might feel at the moment.”
In contrast to the widespread view of Wilder as a hardened cynic, McBride reveals him to be a disappointed romantic. Wilder's experiences as an exile led him to mask his sensitivity beneath a veneer of wisecracking that made him a celebrated caustic wit. Amid the satirical barbs and exposure of social hypocrisies, Wilder’s films are marked by intense compassion and a profound understanding of the human condition. McBride writes further on that “Wilder’s habitual feeling of being ausländisch (foreign or alien) deeply influenced his work as a filmmaker. “Wilder’s characters,” the author comments, “cross boundaries of every kind, physical, social, and psychological. They challenge and violate social mores, operate on the edges of the law, transgress what is considered proper behavior.”
In The Lost Weekend (1945) Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s script conveys perfectly the feeling of irreversibility, the spiral of self-destruction that leads Don Birnam (Ray Milland) to continue his clinical alcoholism. The film’s relentless depiction of Birnam’s moral decline explains why it has held up particularly well. Wilder admitted to having developed the film “as a way to explain Raymond Chandler to himself.” Paramount convinced Wilder that a matinée idol would be necessary for the leading role, so the audience would not be revolted by the sordid experience. Robert Montgomery, Cary Grant and Alan Ladd refused to tackle such a risky role. "Birnam is both tragic clown and audience staring back at the performer in silent contempt and ridicule."
McBride also reviews Wilder's acerbic noir film Ace in the Hole (1951), which he calls “boldly uncompromising” and “Wilder’s bleakest view of human venality . . . so grim in its indictment of the public for its heartless enjoyment of morbid spectacle that American audiences rejected the film for holding a mirror up to them”; the unfairly maligned sex comedy Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), which McBride prefers to call “Rabelaisian”; and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), butchered by its own studio in a manner that broke Wilder’s spirit. Despite their tendency “toward satire and ridicule,” he writes, Wilder’s films “do not simply deride or discredit moral principles; instead they explore moral issues and deplore or mock the way principles are often violated. Anyone who comes away from a Wilder film thinking the director believes that life is meaningless is projecting on it the kind of film the spectator fears. As cold-blooded as Wilder’s characters and situations can be, as skeptical and pessimistic as he is, there is always emotion or humor in his viewpoint.” Source: www.wsws.org
If you wanted to write a screenplay for a blockbuster film, Aristotle is the last person you might ask for advice. He lived more than 2,000 years ago, spent his days lecturing on ethics and never saw a movie in his life. But some of the best contemporary writers of stage and screen think that this ancient Greek philosopher knew exactly how to tell a gripping story for any age. ‘The rulebook is the Poetics of Aristotle,’ Aaron Sorkin said. ‘All the rules are there.’ Art is not a simple mirror of reality – far from it – for we shape the images or words to make some particular point. In one of the most famous statements from the Poetics, what you want to achieve most as a writer of drama is to evoke pity in your viewers – that is, empathetic pity followed by jolting realisation. When you do this right, your audience walks out of the theatre different from when they entered, having experienced an emotional cleansing of sorts – what the Greeks called Catharsis.
This is the true power of storytelling. The first of his key concepts of storytelling is quite simple but too frequently ignored in modern scripts: "A story that is complete must have a beginning, middle, and ending." Now consider how many movies you’ve seen that lack a clear and logical beginning to introduce the action and characters. Audiences will allow you some leeway if you want to reveal a backstory in flashbacks, but if you don’t cover the basics at the start of your story, the viewers could become confused. There are also plenty of films that start with a strong premise but lose their steam somewhere in the middle – a fundamental mistake according to Aristotle. But the most common error in films that the Greek philosopher would condemn is a weak ending, in which the screenwriters don’t know how to bring the story to a proper close. Another key point is how the characters should fare overall in the arc of a dramatic plot. It is important for a character to change from the beginning to the end of a story to achieve the maximum effect on an audience. Aristotle also wrote that you could have a truly good person suffer a terrible ending, but this will leave your audience full of shock and disgust. Similarly, if you have a really evil person triumph at the end of your story, the viewers will throw popcorn at the screen. What remains is the character change that Aristotle says works best. So we are left then with the best tragic characters being someone in-between – that is, neither terribly wicked nor a shining example of virtue. During the story, this character undergoes a downfall not through great wickedness or vice, but because of some mistake or weakness. Source: aeon.co
Amy Schumer revealed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that Michael Cera recently welcomed his first child. Schumer was speaking about lessons for her 2-year-old son, Gene, when she said, "Michael has a baby, too."
She continued, "Is that public knowledge? I just outed him, I just outed his baby."
Cera didn't officially confirm Schumer's statement, but said, "We're right at the beginning of it. We're doing the very basics right now." Representatives for Schumer and Cera did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. The 33-year-old actor is known to keep the details of his personal life private. ET Canada reported in 2018 that the actor had married his longtime girlfriend Nadine after he was seen wearing a gold wedding band. The outlet also reported that he was first seen wearing the ring in January 2017. “He’s just a little 6-month-old baby,” the 33-year-old Superbad star told Extra of his son on Monday, March 7. Us Weekly confirmed in 2018 that the Tony nominee married his partner, Nadine, whose last name has not been revealed.
Michael Cera had previously dated fellow actress Aubrey Plaza after the pair met on the set of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). “Oh, Michael. I dated him for a long time,” Plaza revealed in May 2021 during a “What’s the Tee” podcast episode. “A year and a half. We drove across the country after we shot that movie and almost got married in Vegas.” Cera and Plaza had remained “really good friends,” the Delaware native said at the time, adding, “We love each other. He’s just a weird little freak, and we speak the same language. He’s one of the funniest people I know.” Source: www.usmagazine.com
"It doesn’t matter if older critics like The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt don’t get it, because they’re from a generation that’s largely incapable of “getting it”. That’s not a knock against the 40 and older folk—it’s simply a cultural incompatability, as proven by nearly every single negative review of the film. When Honeycutt criticizes the film (and, strangely, Michael Cera) for having a protagonist that “sort of drifts, not really attached to any idea or goal other than winning the heart of a girl,” he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s paying a compliment to both Cera and co-writer/director Edgar Wright, both of whom faithfully maintain the essence of the source material’s titular role." www.slashfilm.com
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) earned only $10.6 million over its debut weekend. Scott Wampler of Comedy Examiner put Pilgrim’s flopping down to “Michael Cera fatigue”, which Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend also touched on, calling it 'not just a flop, one of the biggest bombs'. People Hate Michael Cera, wrote Josh Tyler: "While he has his fans, people hate Michael Cera a lot. In particular they hate that he always plays the same character and he did it again in Scott Pilgrim. Audiences are sick of it. They're sick of him. They're especially sick of him as a leading man. Maybe that's not fair. I think what people are really sick of is the whole faux hipster/poseur subculture, a group which has been in many cases been confused by Hollywood with geeks, when they're not." Source: cinemablend.com
Mitch Hurwitz, the creator of the acclaimed sitcom "Arrested Development", indicated to Fancast that at least one cast member of the show is holding out on the idea of the movie. Asked about rumors that both Will Arnett and Michael Cera are the lone hold outs, Hurwitz says "I don't want to talk about who is holding out right now because we might still work that out and I don't want to pressure anyone through the press... Although I will say that Will Arnett is gung-ho, so there's a big clue." Hurwitz also admits that because the film is for fan service, its budget will be quite limited - "The fans have been so sincere in their fondness for it. That's really the big motivation to make the film." Source: ew.com
"I'm always so hesitant in saying anything about the movie", Jason Bateman said in March 2011. "Because even if I say I have no comment, then that is a headline: 'Jason Bateman Talks About The Arrested Development Movie! He Said He Had No Comment!' I always feel so bad, because we're not trying to perpetuate no news at all. But we politely answer when we're asked, and there is no update." Still, just like the ever-resilient Michael Bluth, Jason Bateman had high hopes for the eventual film. Rumor has it there were abundant tensions on the set of Arrested Development, and even Michael Cera once called Jason Bateman 'a major asshole,' probably because some critic considered Bateman as the original deadpan straightman. Also, in May 2018, Jessica Walter became part of an on-set controversy regarding harassment she said she had received from Arrested Development co-star Jeffrey Tambor. During a cast interview with the New York Times, Walter was asked about an incident which Tambor had alluded to. Walter stated that "In like almost 60 years of working, I've never had anybody yell at me like that on a set. And it's hard to deal with, but I'm over it now", while also noting that Tambor had apologized and that she would work with him again. Source: moviesblog.mtv.com
Juno (2007) - Outtakes. During the scene in which Juno talks with Mark and Vanessa Loring for the first time, and she asks the couple why they don't have any plans to invite their friends for a baby shower, Elliot Page gets constantly stuck in a loop, laughing uncontrollably. Only with the humorous help from Jason Bateman (who is heard to say: 'Third time is the charm' and 'is tea what is in your cup?'), Page manages to resume Juno's scene withouth losing her continuity.
In December 2020, after disclosing that he is transgender, the Oscar-nominated actor and star of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy Elliot Pagebecame the most famous trans man on the planet. In Esquire, Page has opened up about just how difficult this time was and how the movie studio went so far as to control his clothing during the press tour. “I think of times when people actively were like, ‘No, you need to wear a dress,’ in very, very, very pivotal moments. I remember the premiere of Juno at the Toronto International Film Festival. Previously…I dressed how I wanted to dress – not dissimilar to now…I said I wanted to wear a suit, and Fox Searchlight was basically like, ‘No, you need to wear a dress.’ And they took me in a big rush to one of those fancy stores on Floor Street. And then all the Juno press, all the photo shoots – Michael Cera was in slacks and sneakers. I look back at the photos, and I’m like…?” Page also detailed the pressure that comes with starring in a hit movie, “This sounds strange to people, and I get that people don’t understand. Oh, fuck you, you’re famous, and you have money, and you had to wear a dress, boo-hoo. I don’t not understand that reaction. But that’s mixed with: I wish people would understand that that shit literally did almost kill me.”
For Page, Catherine Keener and Jason Bateman were a few people he could talk to about such struggles, which came to impact all areas of life including not only mental health but also diet, sleep and work. “I struggled with food. Intense depression, anxiety, severe panic attacks. I couldn’t function. There were days when I’d only have one meeting, and I’d leave my house to go to the meeting and have to turn around. Not being able to get through a script – could not. I couldn’t read, couldn’t get through a paragraph.” Source: www.womenshealth.com.au
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