Review: "Being the Ricardos"

By Ben Miller

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin is no stranger to historical drama and Being the Ricardos adds to the list.  With a deft ensemble and a dynamite lead performance from Nicole Kidman, the film will be an enjoyable time for fans of I Love Lucy and Sorkin fans alike.  Fair warning though: If Sorkin isn't your cup of tea, this film can be hard to swallow.

Lucille Ball (Kidman) is at the height of her powers. Alongside her husband and co-star Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), their sitcom I Love Lucy is the most popular show on television.  But in 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy was on the hunt for Communists within the United States.  Word gets out among the CBS executives that Ball was interviewed by his committee. Ball and Arnaz begin to question the viability of the show if this information became public...

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Yes No Maybe So: "Being the Ricardos"

by Nathaniel R

the stars at a table read

The teaser is out for Amazon's Being the Ricardo, which is not a biopic in the common sense but a behind-the-scenes drama about one week in the making of the I Love Lucy show and the volatile Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball marriage/working relationship. At least that's what we've heard about it. The trailer on the other hand, suggests something more like a glimpse of Lucille Ball's ego and fight to stay on top in the (then) new medium of television.

Let's discuss after the jump...

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Months of Meryl: Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#51 —Florence Foster Jenkins, a socialite and opera singer of abysmal ability.

MATTHEW: Florence Foster Jenkins was an affluent New York heiress who is only remembered today for her decades-long career as a nonprofessional soprano that spurred many to label her “the world’s worst opera singer.” Meryl Streep is one of the most acclaimed and rewarded actresses in history, a global celebrity whose foremost attribute is talent, pure and simple. The marquee casting of Streep as Jenkins is the amusing and unignorable irony at the center of Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins, a biographical drama that narrativizes the amateur, septuagenarian chanteuse’s notorious attempts to resuscitate her dormant career in the years before her death in 1944. It is nothing if not a testament to Streep’s power as one of the only active, major female movie stars of a certain age that a period piece about an awful opera singer well into her 70s received a prime summer release from a major studio (Paramount) and a full-steam awards campaign that garnered the actress her 20th Oscar nomination...

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Review: Meryl Streep as "Florence Foster Jenkins"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

It takes a gifted singer to sing this horribly. Every other note is wrong. No phrasing goes unmangled by shortness of breath. No lovely moment meant to soar cannot be shattered by a flat ear-piercing decibel. The central conceit of Stephen Frears new comedy Florence Foster Jenkins is that Florence, a considerably wealthy patron of the arts played by Meryl Streep, lives for music but is ghastly at it. The inside joke, given the casting, is that we all know La Streep can sing with the best of them. She followed the "is there nothing she can't do?" revelation of Ironweed's tragic showstopper "He's Me Pal" (1987, Oscar-Nominated) with transcendent country crooner feeling in Postcards From the Edge (1990, Oscar-Nominated), and just kept on singing whenever a movie gave her the opportunity all the way up through last year's Ricki and the Flash which was practically a concert film there were so many scenes of Streep at the mic, rocking out.

Florence Foster Jenkins doesn't rock out. Florence is not that kind of girl and Florence, also, is not the kind of movie...

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Seventeen (Links) Again

• Variety TCA Awards announced with top honors going to The People vs OJ Simpson, Black-ish, The Americans, Mr Robot all of which enjoyed big Emmy nominations and Crazy Ex Girlfriend which did not. GRRRR
• TheaterMania Nina Arianda talks Florence Foster Jenkins (I just saw the movie and she's bliss to watch in it, so lively)
• The Observer Thelma Adams on John Waters restored Multiple Maniacs
• Broadway.com Glenn Close might be reviving Sunset Boulevard on Broadway
• The Film Stage Martin Scorsese says Silence will be ready for release this year as planned. (But that means Paramount has 4 major titles to juggle this Oscar season.)

• Interview talks to Little Men breakout Michael Barbieri who's already lined up two major projects afterwards
• i09 Deadpool 2 will take aim at superhero sequels in its jokey fourth wall breaking

Controversies
• Nerds of Color Why is the Kubo and the Two Strings cast, set entirely in Japan, so white? Good question. And why on Earth is Rooney Mara doing this again after being raked over the coals for taking Tiger Lily in Pan? I asked it about the also totally Asian Guardian Brothers which as an all white star voice cast (Kidman/Streep/etcetera) despite being about Chinese legends and people got mad at me, as if animated films should have different rules and it's okay because everyone does it. It's not okay. Stars with huge bank accounts need to stop accepting these roles, they have innumerable other ways to make a quick buck. It just looks bad for everyone. Animated studios need to stop doing this. The voice talent is not the stars of animation, it's the animation itself. ACCEPT YOUR STRENGTHS. Big ups to Disney who cast racially appropriate actors for Big Hero 6 and Moana, trusting the material was there and you don't need big movie star names on posters when their faces never appear in the film.
• After Ellen this is some bullshit - Delta Airlines edited the kisses between Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara out of Todd Haynes' Carol
• Slate good piece on understanding angry conspiracy theory behavior via angry Suicide Squad defenders
• Slate another interesting piece on what's wrong with numbers based movie review systems
• Comics Alliance Cara Delevigne proves she has complete ignorance about modern film criticism when she announces that they just don't like superhero movies. Oh, Cara. no. They just don't like yours. If anything critics are too easy on superhero movies which usually win pretty favorable review percentages.

ALSO from Tonga. And one of 11 out male athletes at the gamesOlympic Fever
• Broadway.com 5 random Broadway talents that should be Olympic sports
• The New Yorker "Olympic Events I would win if they existed"  
• Towleroad on that Tongan flagbearer 
• Outsports a record number of out LGBT athletes are at the Olympics this year. Most are women, two of which are even married to each other.
• Outsports None of the male out athletes are from the US begging the question - why don't American male athletes come out? The out men are from the UK, Tonga, New Zealand, Brazil, Finland and The Netherlands.