Tribeca 2019: "Swallow"

Here's Jason Adams reporting from Tribeca once again...

I will only ever experience childbirth from the one side, and you know what? I'm good with that. All due credit to the mothers out there who manage to keep the world populated -- including my own, who was in labor with me for ten hours [shudder] -- but I'm thrown into a tizzy if I stub my toe. Some of the horror stories I've heard from female friends about the experience have turned my all of my reproductive organs into ash. 

I over-share all of this because this has always made me a prime sucker for pregnancy horror films. Rosemary's Baby, as I've covered here before, is my favorite film of all time. And we just got a doozy of a new take on this sub-genre with Swallow, writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis' fantastic new film starring a riveting Haley Bennett as an expectant mother whose isolation and surprise hesitancy spirals her down an unexpected path...

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Review: Long Shot

by Chris Feil

The year ahead of any presidential election always comes with a middling political satire stumbling toward zeitgeist. Remember Swing Vote? Probably not.

This preamble year’s attempt, Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot, also blends that recurring genre with one that feels as periodically common these days - it’s also romantic comedy. Here Charlize Theron plays Charlotte Field, Secretary of State to an incompetent but popular president not seeking a second term, with her chances at launching a presidential run hingeing on the success of her new global green initiative. Her romantic foil comes with Seth Rogen’s Fred Flarsky, a journalist brought aboard as Charlotte’s speechwriter to help boost her approval ratings.

But it’s not just Fred’s witty journalistic approach that helps Charlotte reveal her authenticity to the masses, it’s the boyish crush he’s had for her since she was his teenage babysitter. To the film’s credit, it’s much sweeter (and a lot less creepy) than it sounds.

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Fosse/Verdon - EP 4: "Glory"

previously on Fosse/Verdon

by Murtada Elfadl

I was looking forward to episode 4 of Fosse/Verdon because the trailers showed that it would mark the introduction of Margaret Qualley as Ann Reinking. Maybe Michelle Williams would get a real sparring partner to act against, as Sam Rockwell was not rising up to the occasion. That's mostly because the material he’s given is repetitive. How many notes can an actor ring out of tortured genius? Not many. Little did I know the actor who would actually match up fantastically with Williams wouldn’t be Qualley but rather Aya Cash as her best friend Joan Simon.

But before we get to that we have to deal with Bob Fosse’s mega year of 1973. This is the year he won an Oscar (for Cabaret), 2 Tonys (for Pippin) and 3 Emmys (for Liza with a Z)...

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Links: Anjelica Huston's Life, Magic Mike's Postponement, Madonna's Holograms

The Week's Must Read
Anjelica Huston interview in Vulture -Many great quotes. So much IDGAF mixing with caring about her career in interesting ways. And her tongue is so sharp and she's so candid I am forced to order her autobiography "Watch Me"

More links after the jump involving Mean Girls, casting news, Avengers Endgame, new series in development, and the Billboard Music Awards...

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Not exactly maternal

Let's drink to Senator Keeley's daughter and our Val. I'm afraid I haven't done much for him in these last 20 years...

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