WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "GOD BLESS THE GRIFT" EDITION.......

Trump sells 'customized bibles for $60.00 a piece in another desperate ploy to raise cash to cover his legal fees....for the taping of Trump's commercial, special asbestos coatings were applied to the bible covers......to prevent him from bursting in flames every time he picked one up......

MSNBC execs change their minds about hiring GOP Trumpanzee-In-Chief Ronna McDaniel.......explaining in a press release....."....give us a break, will ya?  We'd had more than a few martinis after work, so hiring a sycophant toady liar seemed like a good idea at the time.....as kind of a sick joke, ya know?  Jeez, nobody has a sense of humor anymore....

Trump considers choices for his Vice President running mate.....
.....several potential candidates turned him down upon reading the fine print in the 'Vice Presidential Pre-nup' they'd need to sign....which call for a required lobotomy, castration and a short leash tied to Trump's desk at all times.....

RFK JR. announces his running mate for Vice President......the woman who paid the bill his Super Bowl ad.....and promises his supporters he'll forever ban vaccinations....."....we won't stop until every kid in American has a fair shot at contracting Polio, Typhoid, Bubonic Plague, Scurvy and COVID..."

'IRISH WISH'......NETFLIX'S ANOINTED HALLMARK PRINCESS....

Irish Wish (2024-Netflix)       all hail Her Majesty of pseudo-Hallmark Netflix romcoms.....

          and who'd have thought it? Lindsay Lohan???

          You mean the former Disney-fied child star who grew into the tabloids' favorite dysfunctional diva?

           You bet your Parent Trap we do.....and why not. She's bubbly, cute, redheaded and when called upon, a comedienne as skilled at physical comedy as any popular romcom starlet.

            Not that there's too many of them around anymore. The genre's been in steep decline, only recently revived by the unlikely success of "Anyone But You" and its star Sydney Sweeney. 

           We've not much to say about the movie. It's produced by Brad Krevoy, who normally spends his time grinding out Hallmark romcoms faster than McDonald's slaps together Quarter Pounders. 

            Given extra Netflix bucks to play around with, "Irish Wish" benefits from being actually shot in the lush, gorgeous Irish countryside.......(though we suspect CGI artists dabbed an extra layer of green on the footage....)

            This one falls in that familiar Hallmark-ian sub-genre of "be careful what you wish for".  Lindsay tells the mischievous Irish fairy St. Brigid she wants the guy who's marrying her best friend.....

            Presto chango, she's now living the fantasy she longed for, except she realizes she not only doesn't love the guy, she's falling for the wedding photographer guy. 

           Oh my....oh my. How will this all end?

           Anyone who's sat through even a couple of Hallmark movies knows that's the silliest of questions. 

           Anyhoo, it's good to see La Lohan back in action and in fine comedic form. The movie, of course, is way, way below the talents she capable of, but for now, we'll take it. 

            It's lighter than air fluff and Lohan look likes she's enjoying herself while doing it.  So what's not to like?

            3 stars (***). 

'THE UGLY AMERICAN'.....BRANDO'S FAILED DIPOMACY.....

The Ugly American (1963).....supposedly took many liberties with the best selling book it was based on. 

          BQ never read the book, so we'll confine ourselves to the film alone.

          When this movie arrived in theaters, JFK would still be alive and well for at least another 8 months.....

          Also alive and well at the time......our belief (and our young President's) that the United States stood on the side of the angels in our global fight against Communism and its brutal true believers seeking to engulf, conquer and enslave the entire world. 

          That would explain the attitudes and behavior of freshly appointed ambassador Harrison Carter MacWhite (Marlon Brando).

         He's been sent to represent the U.S. in the turbulent Southeast Asia country of Sarkhan, which lives under the threat of incursion by its communist neighbor North Sarkhan.

         Okaaaaayyyy........take a wild guess as to which real country Sarkhan is a fictitious stand-in for.......

         And does any of this sound familiar?  We're propping up a corrupt, unpopular regime in South Sarkhan, and commie rebels are sabotaging a spiffy new highway we're co-funding.....

        The 'Yankee Go Home' crowd among the local populace makes their displeasure known to MacWhite immediately when they violently mob his limo as soon as he gets off the plane. 

         He managed to secure the post, much to the displeasure of senators who grilled him at his confirmation hearing. But this ace card got him the gig - his longtime friendship with Sarkhan's beloved,'man-of-the-people' leader Deong (Eiji Okada of "Hiroshima Mon Amour"). They fought the Japanese together in World War 2.

         The old pals re-unite but quickly have a bitter, enraged falling out. MacWhite, bristling at Deong's determination to toss out the U.S. supported regime, accuses him of being a communist. 

        MacWhite, a steadfast, Team USA patriot, launches into ill-advised, bull-headed moves to impose his will (and American interests) on the weak willed Sarkhanese Prime Minister. But it isn't long before Deong and his massive populist crowd are knockin' on the palace front door. 

         Along the way to this pivotal moment, the film makes it clear that the genuinely honest and patriotic Deong is being duped by the Russians and the North Sarkhanese. But both he and MacWhite find this out way too late......

        ......which of course, doesn't bode well for Deong, MacWhite, the Sarkhanese and the good old U.S. of A.

           To all this, the film attaches its idea of a pithy, ironic final zinger. Even as MacWhite publicly admits to the wrongheaded hubris of his Team USA diplomacy in a televised news conference, a suburbanite shuts the TV off. 

           You could consider this film a preview of coming attractions.......months later, JFK's shot dead and Lyndon Johnson takes the country neck deep into the quicksand of Vietnam. And eventually Americans finally take exception to feeding their young  sons into the Southeast Asia meat grinder.

           As for the film itself, it's strictly talky, stodgy Universal Studios sausage. Even though some it's filmed in Thailand, it still bears the artificial veneer of the Universal backlot.

           Brando's relatively contained performance does offer a sturdy anchor, but his character's conversion to a more realistic worldview never rings true. And the film's have-it-every-which-way message - yes-the-commies-are-evil-but-respect-the-will-of-the-people-we're-trying-to-help.....hardly comes across.....

           No wonder that guy shut off his TV in the middle of Brando's blah-blah-blah.....he wouldn't listen till it was too late either.....

           2 stars (**).

THE TRAIL OF LOST HEARTS.....DEEPLY HURT PEOPLE SEARCH FOR HIDDEN STUFF.....AND FIND EACH OTHER

 The Trail Of Lost Hearts by Tracey Garvis Graves (2024) 

        After reading a slew of domestic, psychological thrillers, this book provided just the kind of heartfelt, emotional read I needed.....to maybe renew the idea that there's good people in the world and that possibly there's hope for humanity after all.

        And also, I'm rendered powerless to resist a story of two terribly hurt damaged people who find solace, love and glimmers of happiness in each other's company........only to have circumstances and fresh turns of fate drive them apart.

      Wren and Marshall encounter each other on the hiking trails of National Parks in the Pacific Northwest. Wren's lost the man she loved dearly for three years - in the double catastrophes of his accidental death and traumatizing revelations about him. Marshall's own sudden, tragic loss of a beloved family member was so gut-wrenching, he can't bring himself to speak of it.

       Tentatively, they form a bond of friendship as they pursue their shared, adventurous devotion to 'geocaching'....a sort of outdoorsy scavenger hunt of using GPS tracking to uncover small objects hidden by their fellow geocachers.

       At this point, I hardly need to mention that Wren and Marshall's friendship grows into something much more. But obstacles, complications and a surprising turn of events are hurled into this couple's path........none of which you'll hear from me. The pure enjoyment of a story like this comes from a reader experiencing all the characters highs and lows as they occur......and as a reader you find yourself quietly cheering them on and then suffering along with them when their lives go awry.

      So here's a book unashamed and unafraid to deliver everything it promises.....all of those big impassioned, poignant and heartstring-pulling moments you'd expect to find when lost hearts come across each other. (And an especially nice change of pace if you need a break from those 'there's-something-strange-about-the-next-door-neighbors' thrillers......)

       5 stars (*****)    

OFF THE AIR....A TV REPORTER ON THE TRAIL OF A TALK SHOW HOST'S KILLER....

 Off The Air by Christina Estes (2024)

       A fast, mostly entertaining read, but a very mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly.....

        First thing to like - author Christina Estes, an award winning Phoenix TV reporter certainly knows the territory. She plunges you into the the super hectic life of a local TV station "live on the street" reporter. Jolene Garcia. Jolene spends her days scrambling around the city for a hot scoop to make the evening news, along with her equally ambitious competitors from rival stations. If the book had solely concentrated on this part of the story - the day to day frenzied life of a journalist, it might've been on its way to a much higher rating than I'm giving it.

        A murder mystery rocks the city with discovery of the poisoning of controversial local talk show host Larry Lemmon,, a sort of local Tucker Carlson-Rush LImbaugh right-wing wanna-be. Jolene craves to make the story her very own exclusive since she did the last interview with Lemmon before his death. But she's scooped at every turn by "JJ", her hated glamorous and gorgeous rival. J.J.'s the embodiment of the TV news-babe in Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" song - the bubble headed blonde who can tell you about a plane crash with a gleam in her eye.....

        More pressure falls upon Jolene from her station manager and news director, who demand nightly fresh breaking stories to feed the station's growing social media outlets of facebook, instagram and twitter.

       And here's where "Off The Air" starts to fly off the rails a little in terms of our investment in Jolene's hunt for news. She quickly becomes unlikable and obnoxious in a series of series of foolhardy, unprofessional and highly questionable maneuvers to hunt down her story. Her reckless interviewing and reporting antagonizes her subjects and angers her confidential police source. The only time a reader might feel empathy for her is when she's harassed by some repulsive creep trying to date her.

        The pacing of the book also begins to stop cold as it takes time outs to indulge in some Phoenix lore and recaps of past true current events that relate to Jolene's tribulations.
And I should warn that those who don't care for today's all too real toxic politics inserted into novels, will see it on full display here. But given the Larry Lemmon character, it's unavoidable.......which makes the mystery factor not very surprising since he was so roundly hated by everyone around him, there's an overabundance of likely suspects. (And that even includes some of his once ardent supporters who fell out of favor with him....)

       As I said, the nuts 'n bolts, give-and-take of local TV news reporting makes fascinating reading, but Jolene's problematic behavior only muddies up the plot (most painfully in the big reveal finale.) But there's enough good stuff that made it a quick, diverting read. 3 stars (***) 

'HYPNOTIC'......ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS, DONE WITH SPECIAL VISUAL AFFLECKS....

Hypnotic (2023)     We're not here to pound on this little Robert Rodriguez movie, which lived its short theatrical life in complete obscurity.......

              In fact, we kind of enjoyed its swift 90 minutes as it feverishly tried to duplicate the mind-bending storytelling and visual flair of films like "Inception", "The Matrix" and "Memento"......

              Think of it a scrappy, junky, slapdash version of the above mentioned.....and somehow amusing in its tireless, repeated efforts to pull the rug out from any audience members hoping to figure it out. 

                Hint: Don't bother, just let the cascade of nonsensical events wash over you until the credits roll......

                The initial setup seems strictly boilerplate. Burned out police detective Danny Roarke (a burned out, disinterested Ben Affleck) still broods and agonizes over the broad daylight kidnapping of his young daughter Minnie. Ah, but we're only getting started.....

                Back on the job, Danny plunges into the middle of a bank robbery orchestrated by the sinister Lev Dellrayne (William Fichtner).  Dellrlayne appears gifted with overwhelming powers of hypnotic suggestion. He only has to stare at you to alter your reality of where you are and who you are. And whatever he tells you to do.....well, you know the rest......

   

               That's as much as we can discuss here without spoiling whatever entertainment you could expect to derive from this movie. From this point on, "Hypnotic" unfolds a seemingly neverending array of "gotcha!" plot twists and visual "what-the-hell" tricks that look like Rodriguez broke into Christopher Nolan's house and swiped his left over storyboards. 

                This had enormous Guilty Pleasure potential, but Affleck spoils the fun with his glum, gimme-my-check-and-let-me-get-the-hell-out-of-here performance. What a party pooper.   Fichtner reliably adds some cool menace, but oh Lordy, if ever a movie needed the madness of Nicolas Cage, it's this one.

                And since he's plundering other directors' ideas, Rodriguez might've thrown in a dash of his own perverse humor, as in his "Planet Terror" horror jamboree from the first half of "Grindhouse."

                What's the point of making a quickie 'Grindhouse' version of "Inception" if you're not going to have pulpy good time with it?  

                

                 But in all truth, can't say we were bored either. If nothing else, this director at least possesses the good sense to keep things in perpetual motion....... 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) 

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "MAKE AMERICA BLOODY AGAIN" EDITION.....

 Trump can't cough up the nearly half a billion dollars bond needed for an appeal of his fraud conviction......sources say he's currently waiting for results of his mail-out to elderly supporters, begging them to send hims their social security checks and entire life savings....("Mail the cash now and you'll receive a pair of sneakers, and an autographed page of top secret nuclear codes!")

Trumpanzees try to help Trump spin his way out of his "if I don't get elected, there's gonna be a bloodbath" remark......explaining the ex-President's loss will upset voters enough to accidentally cut themselves shaving faces...or legs.....

Robert F.Kennedy Jr. considers Aaron Rodgers, anti-vax, conspiracy theory loon football player as his V.P. choice......Rodgers promises that together, he and RFK Jr. will stop at nothing to prevent Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden from abducting children and baking them into pizzas....

Mike Pence won't endorse Trump but can't bring himself to say he won't vote for him......doctors at the Mayo Clinic had warned Pence that their groundbreaking spinal transplant might only give him limited backbone......

Trump accuses Jewish voters of hating their religion and Israel if they vote Democratic......and promises that Democrat-voting Jews will be sent to special 're-eduction' camps, to include forced labor, lobotomies and free group showers......

'WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY'.....NOT SO MUCH A BIO....MORE A BIO-HAZARD.....

 Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)    It only takes watching the first few minutes of 'Weird' to figure out what its writer, song parodist Al Yankovic is up to.....

           Just as Weird Al mocked pop music hits by cleverly re-writing their lyrics, he now witheringly mocks the entire genre of showbiz film biographies.......

           As he shows his own life as little mercy as he did to the songs he lampooned. 

           In short, an alternate universe anti-biography......one in which Al gets it on with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) and shoots it out drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro).

             No question, a brilliantly funny idea for a satire for sure. Cornball glossed-over fictionalized movie biographies have had it coming since the 1940's......

            But is this joke sustainable for close to an hour and 50 minutes?

            Nah. 

             As much as Yankovic and his co-writer and director Eric Appel struggle to maintain the craziness over the long haul, the movie starts to run out of comedic energy after the first hour.....and then settles down to coast along on just being......weird. 

            Can't fault the film's casting, though......some of which is inspired.....

            Let's start with Harry Potter himself, the 5 foot, 5 inch Daniel Radcliffe playing the lanky 6 footer Yankovic. You can think of it as another one of film's living sight gags, but Radcliffe fully commits to embodying Yankovic's innate talents and his manic frenzy to blaze his own path to fame and fortune. 

              The film further benefits from its two main supporting players - Rainn Wilson deadpanning it as the famous d.j. Dr. Demento, who specialized in airing novelty songs and Wood wickedly spoofing Madonna's 1980's music video persona.......

              And cameos run rampant, especially in a pool party where Al's seen hobnobbing with his fellow off-the-rails celebrities......Wolman Jack (Jack Black), Andy Warhol (Conan O'Brian), Pee Wee Herman (Jorma Taccone), Tiny Tim (Dimitri Martin), Gallagher (Paul F. Tomkins), Salvador Dali (Emo Phillips) and Divine (Nina West).

                These cameos, we should point out, occur early on in the film......the chunk of it that still maintains its hilarious deconstruction of biographies,  That part that keeps you laughing.....

                 But alas, all good things come to an end and the good things in 'Weird' come to an end with almost an hour of it still left to play out......

                Weird Al of all people, should have understood that the brevity of his song parodies kept us giggling. His biography parody had comic potential as maybe an 80 minute film, not 108 minutes. 

               BQ did laugh......until we knocked it down to slightly smiling.....and then further to sighing for it to end. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

                

                

'END OF STORY'.....IF 'CLUE' WERE PLAYED AS A GREEK TRAGEDY.......

 

 End Of Story by A.J. Finn (2024)   Nothing any blogger could say would prevent this book from becoming an instant best seller....

       After all, it arrives from A.J.Finn, whose "The Woman In The Window" flew off the Barnes & Noble tables at the front of each store...

       Everyone wants to know......any good?  Will it keep me up all night?  Is it as fun and readable as "Woman In The Window"?

      SQ's reply......

      It's a vastly more ambitious effort than "Window".....sometimes with wit so sharp, you could cut a knife with it.  But in telling its long, involved story, sometimes a maddening, 1 mile-an-hour slow boat to who knows where......

       At times, the prose will dazzle you with cleverness, even while you mutter, "Oh please, just cut to the chase and get on with it already, willya?"

       Yes, it's that kind of book.

       Welcome to the sprawling, sumptuous San Francisco mansion of world famous mystery writer Sebastian Trapp. A dying, elderly recluse, Trapp himself is surrounded with as much mystery as was ever in his whodunit adventures of a 1920's Holmes-ian detective.

       Whatever happened to his first wife Hope and teenage son Cole, both of whom disappeared off the face of the earth simultaneously ....from two different locations?  Kidnappings? Murders? Alien abductions?  

         Maybe Nicky Hunter, a young chronicler of detective fictions can figure it all out. Trapp's invited her to live in the mansion, supposedly to help him with his memoirs, but he teases her with the idea that "they might be able to solve a mystery or two themselves..."

        Swirling around in Trapp's orbit are all manner of unusual suspects... including his beautiful second wife Diana, his dutiful daughter Madeline, imperious Aunt Simone and her son, cousin Fred, who was Cole's best friend before the boy dropped out of sight. Do some of them or all of them know more than they're letting on?

        Little by little, Nicky's able to start snapping the Greek Tragedy family puzzle pieces together, particularly in the short heartbreaking life of Cole Trapp.  Sensitive, gentle and brutally bullied, the boy earned nothing but withering contempt from his famous father, who's sort of a mashup of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ernest Hemingway.   

        All the suspicious doings in Castle Trapp take a long, long time to unfold, but author Finn tries to entertain us with the book's knowing tributes to the tropes and lore of classic detective fiction.  Like the board game "Clue" and the play "Sleuth", he loads up the plot with clues, weapons, red herrings, and mysterious notes from.....(SPOILER REDACTED SO YOU'LL CONTINUE READING THIS REVIEW....)

         If you make it to the final chapters, "End Of Story" finally launches itself into a highly theatrical melodramatic windup......obviously thrown in to make the movie deal easier to secure.  The revelations and Big Reveals require pages and pages of dialogue exposition to explain fully......but Finn does himself or the book no favors by dragging this out even further with overwritten, literary fiction flourishes. 

          Those who savor and adore detective fiction of days gone by will feast on "End Of Story", but anyone seeking out a potential easy, breezy beach read.........the draggy pace may very well put you in a deep enough snooze until you're wakened by the tide coming in....

          3 stars (***).  (Helpful hint:  it's not Col.Mustard...in the library....with a candlestick.....)

'IN THE ORBIT OF YOU'...DEEPLY CONFLICTED CHILDHOOD FRIENDS RE-UNITE IN HIGH SCHOOL...ANGST ENSUES.....

  In The Orbit Of You by Ashley Schumacher (2024)

        Quite a heart-tugger, this one. If you fall under its spell (which the book casts right away), don't be surprised if it's impossible to get through it with dry eyes.

        For sheer emotional power, nothing beats a story of childhood best friends abruptly separated and then reunited years later. And with the passage of time giving them a chance to nurture a long ago friendship into something much more.

        Sam and Nova's tender bonding as children was made heartbreaking by Nova's attempts to help Sam cope with the horrific physical abuse his father inflicted on him. Then circumstances end the kids' time together........Sam's rescued into the custody of his aunt and uncle while Nova's mother pursues her career as a travelling freelance accountant, forcing Nova to grow up in temporary locations, always the new girl in school.

         Once again, Nova lands in a brand new place for her high school junior year. It's the school where Sam, under the healing parentage of his relatives, has grown into a football star, complete with a beautiful cheerleader girlfriend, athletic scholarships, and maybe pro football in his future.

         But secretly, it's not the future he wants for himself. And his reunion with his long lost childhood friend Nova touches off multiple conflicting emotions for both of them. Years of moving place to place has left Nova struggling to define herself and her goals - her rekindled friendship with Sam only serves to send them on an emotional rollercoaster with each other. And their attempts to establish a shaky, semi-secret, platonic relationship brings them both to a breaking point.

         For everyone who remembers the brief, golden time they spent with a past childhood crush (and who hasn't?) and also recalls the pre-college agonies of figuring out who you are and want you want.....what can I say except you'll find "In The Orbit Of You" kind of impossible to resist. So prepare to have your heartstrings not merely tugged and played like a rock guitar in a 5 star show....I, for one, didn't mind at all. If you need the book equivalent of a warm hug, look no further.....  5 stars (*****)

'THE MYSTERY WRITER'.....MYSTERIOUS AUTHORS AND CONSPIRACY LOONS COLLIDE.....

  The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill (2024)

       I guess it's official now......QAnon Krazies have become fair game for mystery-thriller authors. This is the second or third book I've come across populated with those Tinfoil Hat, conspiracy theory imbeciles who feed off the toxic river of disinformation flowing out of social media....and current political discourse. Given that they're both dumb and proven dangerous, it's no wonder they're starting to also infest popular fiction......

        These internet whack-a=doodles and their ludicrous tweets serve as the connecting glue holding together the two separate genres that this book unfolds. The first 60 percent sets up a multiple murder thriller set in an American town (Lawrence, Kansas).

         But then, for the remaining 40 percent, the story takes a hairpin swerve into some kind of breathless, international action-adventure, with two of the three lead characters hunting down what happened to the other one who disappeared.

        I found the Lawrence portion infinitely more gripping and entertaining then the abrupt excursion into a wild, incredibly far-fetched Robert Ludlum-esque whoop-de-doo. The final reveal of what the villainy's all about came close (at least for me) to very wry spoofery.. It really made me wonder if author Sulari Gentill was for real or maybe doing an elaborate send-up of......well, my lips must seal before any spoilers emerge from them.

         Yet with all these flaws, I still had a pretty good time with "The Mystery Writer".....I could never resist stories centered around writers,...... those established and famous and those young novices struggling to find their creative voice along with a publisher. Throw in bodies piling up and a baffling disappearance, then you've got me hooked.

Overall, it's a bumpy, lumpy goulash of those two genres I mentioned but I couldn't help but stay for the whole thrill ride. But I'm not comfortable with using the QAnon asylum inmates as window dressing (at and times, comedy relief). I find the mere thought of them as depressing......and given current events, more than little frightening. May they all check in to a padded room with a view....... 3 stars (***)

'TAYLOR SWIFT - THE ERAS TOUR (TAYLOR'S VERSION)......NO WONDER SHE TERRIFIES REPUBLICANS.....

 Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version) (2023)

    Sat down along side BD (Beloved Daughter) to watch this 3 & 1/2 hour extended version of Swift's concert movie, now streaming on Disney +......

              BD never stopped singing along with Swift througout the entire running time....

             So did a giant stadium crowd packed with hundreds of thousands of devoted Swifties.......they're visiible in a few brief clips, but mostly exist as thousands of cell phone lights surrounding the musical love of their lives.......

              As a lover and collector of symphonic film scores, we're not qualified to discuss Swift's music......other than it's catchy, tuneful and presented with the kind of spectacular showmanship that Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Spielberg and Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus can only drool at with envy. 

             We can't help but bow down to Swift's reign as the Empress of Pop Music.......her tireless, prolific creativity and her staggeringly proficient self-promotion and mass marketing of herself leaves us in awe......

             And she sure as hell knows how to put on one hell of a live performance, filled with dazzling effects, choreography and the Swift-inator herself, literally reveling in her own persona.......

           Listening to her fans scream in rapturous delight, we realize she's the real Lion King........everything the light touches is hers. 

           No wonder she generates such fear and loathing from Donald Trump, the Trumpanzees, the QAnon Krazies and Republicans scraping off the last shreds of their sanity and morals........

           She's everything they despise and tremble at the sight of.....a powerful woman with progressive views who commands a vast fan base that Trump could only dream about as he spews his verbal diarreah to the dwindling crowds of MAGA zombies......

           We can only giggle hysterically at the thought of the ex Toddler-In-Chief sweating through his ten layers of orange varnish as he suffers through a nightmare of Swift publicly endorsing Biden.....

            Though we're not sure a Swift endorsement of Biden would finally drive the last nail through Count Fatula's coffin......

              ......it couldn't hurt.

            Oh and the movie. Fun stuff and an eyepopping spectacle too.

             5 stars (*****)

             

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "EXCITING UPCOMING ELECTION" EDITION......

 

The entire collectively groans and sighs in unison at the thought of another Trump-Biden Presidential election.....but on the positive side, at least twenty state elections commissions promise complimentary valium and vodka shots for voters who show up at the polls......

Trump hosts Hungarian strongman Orban, one of the many brutal, democracy-murdering dictators he so admires......a touching scene unfolded as the two men exchanged gifts before parting.....Orban presented Trump with a whipping post for use on journalists he'll imprison if elected.....Trump gifted Orban with a customized pair of Trump sneakers...(steel-capped for using on political prisoners.....)

GOP takes aim at its latest mortal enemy....Tik Tok....and further warns all tween and teen girls that dancing suggestively on Tik Tok videos will result in immediate house arrest.....at Matt Gaetz's house..

TT

Trump contemplates his choice of running mates....Republican Party Chairperson Lara Trump, explained the vetting process....."all prospective VP candidates will attend a three week obedience school. There they'll learn basic commands...'fetch', 'sit up' 'beg for me', how to roll over for belly scratches, and if needed, 'bad VP! Bad!   Sen Linday Graham has agreed to fill in as trainer,,,,,,,,

'NYAD'.....MAKING US SCREAM "F*** THE HUMAN SPIRIT!"

 

Nyad (20243-Netflix)   Now that awards season is over (thank God), let us pause a moment to remember.....the Human Spirit.

         During the punishing months of awards shows, the Human Spirit gets a real workout in speeches from nominees and winners......

          For those who've tried to put it out of their minds already (not that we blame you), we speak of films that anoint themselves as "celebrations of the power of the Human Spirit..."

          You remember the Human Spirit, right? It refers to humanity's (and movie characters) ability to endure, persevere, survive, and triumph in the face of......fill in the blank......racism, poverty, violence, natural disasters, corruption, disease, and other calamities like the prospect of a Trump Vs. Biden election contest......

           'Human Spirit' movies exist mainly to accomplish two primary goals. #1. Make audiences feel good, comforted and uplifted.....#2 Suck up for Awards statuettes. 

           'Nyad' , at least on paper, must have looked like the ultimate Human Spirit movie.....about long distance swimmer Diana Nyad's five tortuous, grueling attempts to swim 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. After four failed, agonizing tries, she succeeded the fifth time at age 64.

            What a story......and what a dynamo pair of world class actors to bring it to life.....Annette Bening as Nyad and Jodie Foster as her coach Bonnie Stoll. 

            A surefire, barn burnin' Human Spirit feel-good hit, right?

            Wrong. 

            The film, uncompromising in its depiction of Nyad as driven, obsessive and obnoxious to everyone in her orbit, didn't just want to celebrate the Human Spirit......

             For two interminable hours, the film grabs you by the back of your head and literally waterboards you with the Human Spirit.  Each of Nyad's four failed attempts are shown at length.....to the point where both the audience and the characters around Nyad are begging for mercy. 

             Unlike other Human Spirit movies, 'Nyad' wasn't designed to leave its viewers cheering and feeling warm 'n fuzzy about humanity.

            'Nyad' only leaves you breathing a massive sigh of relief that it's finally over. 

             No question that Bening and Foster, at very top of their combined gifted talents, give spectacularly committed performances.

               But once we'd sat through the film, we knew that neither of them had a chance in hell of winning Oscars in their respective categories (Best Actress for Bening, Best Supporting for Foster)

              ......because the filmmakers made 'Nyad' almost as much a punishment to sit through as "Killers Of The Flower Moon". To put it bluntly, a tedious, repetitive slog........and for 'Human Spirit' movies, that's self-destruction on an epic scale. 

               We're not saying that the makers of 'Nyad' should have gone way over in the other direction, such as the shameless, crude heartstring pulling of something like the odious 2011 "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close".  But in making their film an eat-your-spinach chore for audiences, they did neither themselves, nor Diana Nyad any favors. 

               BQ memo to directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.......you did achieve a fully unblemished portrait of Diana Nyad, if that's all you were after. But if you hoped to connect this story to audiences,.....a sad, huge fail. 1 star (*).

               

'KING OF THE GYPSIES'.....'GODFATHER'D CON ARTISTS, INDULGING IN GRATUITOUS VIOLINS.....

 King Of The Gypsies (1978)    Took us a good long time to finally hunt this one down......almost a day after its release, it went into instant obscurity, unavailable anywhere .....

           International Mega-Mogul Dini DeLaurentis must have held delusions of 'Godfather' grandeur when he put this one into production...

           Like the Brando-Pacino blockbuster, 'Gypsies' portrayed an ethnic criminal underclass, living by their own Medieval morals and nursing lifelong hot blooded family feuds.....and ready to spill real blood when they hit their boiling points......

            Gypsies?   Those fortune telling exotics given to travelling place to place?  And wildly dancing in a whirlwind to the sweet frenzy of violins?

             Yeh.....those guys.

             Somehow, this gang doesn't pack the same melodramatic punch as the Corleone family.  But not for lack overheated trying. 

             Blustering self-appointed Gypsy 'King' Zharko (Sterling Hayden) outrages clan rival Spiro (Michael V. Gazzo) by abducting his daughter Rose to procreate with Zharko's scumbag son Groffo. 

             We then fast forward to that younger generation's grown-up years.....Rose (Susan Sarandon) enthusiastically scams the suckers while Groffo (Judd Hirsch) remains a lazy worthless douche. That leads old Zharko to pass the royal torch to Groffo's smoldering, seething young son Dave (Eric Roberts, in his first screen role)

             Dave holds no interest in Kingship, preferring to canoodle with his sweet new non-Gypsy girlfriend (Annette O' Toole) while being the over-protective big brother to his adorable kid sister Tita (Brooke Shields)

             But Dave underestimates the scum-baggery of Daddy Groffo, who not only plans to sell off tween Tita into an arranged marriage, but sends out Gypsy hitmen to bump off his own son. 

             Blood boils, tragedy erupts, blood splatters, dancing girls spin like tops and world class violinist Stephane Grappelli sets the soundtrack on fire to keep up with all the nutty melodramatics.

            We wish we could promise you a real guilty pleasure wallow but writer-director Frank Pierson ("Dog Day Afternoon" "A Star Is Born") possessed no real imagination or visual flair....... (just imagine if madman Ken Russell or Sam Peckinpah had gotten their hands on this story....)

            The actors do make it fun, though. Sarandon never misses a chance to pop her huge eyes, Roberts always looks prepared to self-detonate, Hayden booms his monotone voice for maximum effect, Hirsch embraces his Father-from-hell with gusto, and raspy-voiced Gazzo (the mob turncoat of "Godfather II") enjoys his few chances to ham it up. 

           (Apparently, Shelly Winters is in this crowd somewhere as Hayden's....uh....Gypsy Queen.....but we'd forgotten her name was even listed in the credits....as for Brooke Shields, it's just another example of "how the hell did she get into this movie?"

            Though the film bases itself on a semi-nonfictional novel by Peter Maas, we wouldn't recommend this as any kind of accurate depiction of gypsy life.....(and neither did a lot of gypsies....)

            Dino DeLaurentis saw his 'Godfather' dreams for this movie fade away faster than real dreams do when you wake up. But even with a writer-director too reticent and reserved to make this the shameless pleasure it could've been, the cast goes all out to make it watchable......

            Which it was.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)