8th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards: 2021 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. 2021 was a particularly heinous one for cinema, so the Slip-Me-A-Mickeys flourished in a very target rich environment.

Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

 Worst Film of the Year

The Tender Bar – A boring, dramatically incoherent coming of age tale that makes an episode of The Wonder Years look like Lawrence of Arabia. George Clooney may be the very worst director making big time Hollywood movies. His butchery of this film is done with a chainsaw and not scalpel.  

Being the Ricardos – This cheesy, ham-handed Hollywood humping manages to turn Lucille ball and Desi Arnaz into the two dullest people in entertainment history.

Eternals – This is the worst Marvel movie I’ve ever seen and it isn’t even close. That is quite an accomplishment in cinematic futility.

Space Jam: A New Legacy – You know what would be fun…to put a legitimately moronic meathead who can barely speak a coherent sentence, LeBron James, on-screen with a bunch of corporate intellectual property and let them play basketball. Watching LeBron’s hairline recede is more entertaining.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

Space Jam: A New Legacy – Hey, look at that, at least LeBron won something this year.

Worst Performance of the Year

LeBron James – Space Jam: A New Legacy - LeBron is a mental and moral midget, but he’s also got the charisma of a pile of week-old dog shit…so he’s got that going for him.

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog – Speaking of dog shit…Benedict Cumberbatch, or as my friend Dave calls him, Bend-her-dick Cunt-her-snatch, is supposed to be a menacing old-school cowboy in this movie, but from scene one he’s sashaying around like he’s working it on RuPaul’s runway. If they’d cast the cowboy from the Village People in this role it would’ve been less obviously gay.

Adam Driver – House of Gucci – Adam Driver is a giant, walking, talking anus. When you put him in Italian clothes, with Italian glasses, and have him speak with an Italian accent, he morphs into being a giant, walking, talking anus wearing Italian clothes and glasses, that has an Italian accent.

Jared Leto – House of Gucci – Leto’s performance in this movie makes Father Guido Sarducci look like Sir Laurence Olivier. A master class in awful acting.

Lady Gaga – House of Gucci – Gaga made me gag-gag with her wandering accent and hyper-theatrical posing in this dreadful movie. It is one of the great tragedies of human kind that Gaga now takes herself seriously as an actress.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

Jared Leto – Leto is the Leonardo da Vinci of awful over-acting.

Most Overrated Film of the Year

CODA – CODA is a Hallmark Channel movie that somehow won the Oscar for Best Picture. It is the worst film to win Best Picture in the history of the Academy Awards. The script is awful, the direction amateurish, the acting, including Troy Kotsur, is painful to watch. It also astonishes me that critics didn’t eviscerate this film but instead praised its soft-peddled, after school special bullshit.

The Power of the Dog – Jane Campion is a shitty director and this is a shitty movie. Arthouse fool’s gold that fooled a lot of people…but not me. Trite, vacuous, vapid and venal, this movie is poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted and just all-around poor.

West Side Story – Steven Spielberg can make any movie he wants…and he made THIS piece of shit? If I want to watch dance teams square off in embarrassing street fights, I’ll just watch the original, better version of the story. An entirely useless exercise in historical cinematic revisionism.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

CODA – I wish I was deaf and blind so I’d never have to see or hear about this stupid movie.

Worst Big Budget/Blockbuster/Action/Comedy of the Year

Eternals - See Above.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife – A terrific movie if you want to destroy a long-loved franchise with talentless teens and a terrible script.

Matrix: Resurrection – The Matrix was great. But literally every Matrix movie since the original has gotten worse by at 75%. This abysmal piece of shit puts the franchise deep into negative territory.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards goes to…

Eternals – This was a tough choice as these movies are all abysmal, but sitting through the two hour and thirty-six-minute woke slog that was Eternals was utterly excruciating to the point of torture.

Worst Director

George Clooney – Ironically, Clooney is on one of the most impressive runs of futility for a director since the Joel Schumacher heyday. Just when you think he can’t do any worse, he puts out The Tender Bar, and proves you wrong.

Aaron Sorkin – Sorkin proved last year with The Trial of the Chicago 7 that he was one of the worst directors of his generation, and he keeps the streak alive with Being the Ricardos.

Chloe Zhao – Zhao won an Oscar last year for Nomadland. This year she showed off what an incredibly shitty director she is with Eternals. Good for her.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

All three of these bags of shit. They’re all fucking terrible.

Special Achievement in Cinematic Malpractice

George Clooney – Clooney’s ability to continue to make one movie more awful than the last is a tribute to the endless supply of suck-ups and sycophants in Hollywood and to Clooney’s delusional sense of self. The shitshow that is The Tender Bar is a testament, and should stand as a monument, to the hackery of the ultimate Hollywood asshole...George Clooney.

POS Hall of Fame –

The Smith Family

At the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards, the Smith family were voted to the Piece of Shit All-Stars. This year they’ve made the big leap to become Piece of Shit Hall of Famers!

Here’s a brief glimpse of what I wrote back at the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey awards regarding the Smiths.

“This year we got to hear from Jada Pinkett-Smith how her husband was snubbed by the Academy Awards because he was black. We also got to hear how Jada was boycotting the Oscars in a show of solidarity with other snubbed black actors…which was convenient since she wasn't invited (as Chris Rock hilariously pointed out). I have one simple request for the entire Smith family...Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow…please shut the fuck up and go away forever. Will Smith is an abysmal hack of an actor and a dopey embarrassment as a "rapper". Jada Pinkett-Smith is a fly on the shit that is Will Smith, she desperately needs to bottle her manufactured self-righteous anger, stop talking immediately and vanish with her equally obnoxious other half. Jaden and Willow are kids, so they have an outside chance to not be as malignantly narcissistic as their God-awful parents, but I gotta be honest… it isn't looking very good as they aren't off to the best possible start in not following in their egotistical parents footsteps.”

Well, well, well, looks like I hit the nail on the head six years ago regarding the shitbag Smith family.

The truth is Will “Limp Willie” Smith has always been one of the biggest pieces of shit in Hollywood, and now with his slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars, everyone else gets to see the reality that I’ve known for a long time.

Will has been a piece of shit from day one. He is a bad joke as a rapper and his music has been an embarrassment for all sentient beings from the get-go. His acting career has also been an embarassment from day one. Will Smith is now and always has been a shitty rapper, shitty actor and shitty person. He is, undoubtedly, an incorrigle twat.

Speaking of twats, Will’s wife, Jada, is a talentless, narcissistic whore who’s done a wonderful job of making a cuckold out of her impotent and equally talentless husband by fucking her son’s friend August Alsina. She’s also a wondrous mother who has churned out two of the most repulsive spawn in Hollywood – no small task.

Jaden Smith, Will and Jada’s son, tweeted in the aftermath of Will’s slapping Chris Rock, “that’s how we do it”. Oh, really tough guy? Well Jaden, I invite you to don one of your signature skirts, and then go out into the real world with your toothpick arms, slap somebody, and see what happens to your non-binary ass. I know you don’t know this because you’re an entitled dandy who has never been around a real man in your entire life, but the real world ain’t the Oscars or the movies, and you’re going to find that out the hard way if you ever prance out of your privileged bubble, bitch.

One can only hope that the Smiths, who as individuals and as a collective family, are the most noxious, odious and malignant narcissists in all of Hollywood, a stunning achievement, are sentenced to a life of being in each other’s presence. They deserve that torture, and we deserve that reprieve.

Congratulation Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow, you’re all well-deserving members of the Piece of Shit Hall-of-Fame! Now kindly go fuck yourselves you rancid cunts.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!which are the final awards show on the calender.

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award show on the 2021 calender. That means that 2021, the most dreadful year in recent cinema history, is now, officially and not-so-mercifully, over. Thank the good lord….and I pray that 2022 saves us from the cinematic hell that was 2021. As always…I am not optimistic.

©2022

Being the Ricardos: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

7th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Writer/director Aaron Sorkin out did himself with this masturbatorial piece of baby boomer trash. The only thing worse than the writing and acting in this movie is the directing. Just an abysmal movie in every respect.

Da Five Bloods - Just when you thought Spike Lee might have gotten his groove back, he churns out this amateurish hunk of shit. This cringy movie is so poorly directed as to be embarrassing. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Hillbilly Elegy - Hillbilly Elegy is the cinematic equivalent of watching two toothless, elderly cousins have sex in a dumpster filled with month old egg salad during a heatwave. This movie should be considered a crime against humanity.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. I would rather stick 112 toothpicks down my urethra than watch this movie again.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Sacha Baron Cohen - The Trial of the Chicago 7 : Funnyman Cohen managed to transform Abbie Hoffman into Borat in one of the most unintentionally funny performances in cinema history. Cohen set the art of acting back roughly 75 years with his cornucopia of ham-handed, God-awful accents - none of which were correct for Hoffman.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

Da Five Bloods - Mine explosion scene : This scene is so transparently ridiculous and so egregiously staged and executed it made my colon twinge. The fact that a professional director shot this scene is a travesty.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Final courtroom scene: It was tough narrowing this down to just one scene…but I did my best. This scene where the audience in the courtroom slow claps in appreciation for the courage of the Chicago 7 is like something from a rejected junior high school play. Just the ultimate in cringe.

Hillbilly Elegy - Literally any scene : Just awful. Every scene is just so fucking awful.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. Just atrocious how many awful scenes there are in this abomination. Pick any scene and watch it and try not to light yourself on fire.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - This laughably bad movie was actually nominated for a bunch of Oscars. That is utterly insane. It is also adored by audiences….which is equally insane. What is the world coming to when a piece of cinematic fecal matter like this is exalted? God help us all.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE - Ron Howard : Ron Howard is one of the all-time worst big-time filmmakers. Howard’s movies are so trite they make Happy Days episodes look like Raging Bull. After committing cinematic genocide with Hillbilly Elegy, Howard should have his Oscar for A Beautiful Mind revoked, and be executed on the steps of the Mayberry Courthouse. Thanks for nothing Ron Howard…I’ll see you in hell…where no doubt your films will be playing on a loop.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Andrew Cuomo - I have been telling people Andrew Cuomo was a piece of shit well before it was ever fashionable. Last summer the media, most notably Andrew’s retarded brother Fredo…oops, I mean Chris, and the public, were enamored with Andrew for being such a great leader during the pandemic. Cuomo was so intoxicated by the smell of his own farts he actually “wrote” a book about what a great leader he was during the pandemic…AS NEW YORK WAS BEING RAVAGED BY THE PANDEMIC! I wrote a year ago that Cuomo was a piece of shit and that people were dying because of it…but nobody listened.

Cuomo has always been full of shit. He had done tremendous harm to the New York state health care system before the pandemic even started and then when it did he did even more damage. He also fucked over seniors with his nursing home policy and then lied about it to the feds.

Then once the bloom came off the Cuomo rose and people acknowledged he was a piece of shit, a cavalcade of sexual harassment allegations became public. I have no idea if these allegations are true…and to be honest, I don’t really care. Andrew Cuomo is a piece of shit of epic proportions even if he is entirely innocent of harassing these women…which I seriously doubt.

Andrew Cuomo and brother Chris are nothing but vapid bullshit artists cashing in on their family name. My hope is that Andrew Cuomo, that Sonny Corelone wannabe thug, gets his comeuppance on the Causeway just like Sonny did in The Godfather. I also hope Andy’s numb-nuts, mental defective brother Fredo/Chris has a “boating accident” while saying a Hail Mary out on Lake Tahoe. The world would be so much better if it was devoid of Cuomos.

Andrew Cuomo…you have always been a gigantic piece of shit, but now your legacy is cemented…welcome to the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame!!

P.O.S. ALL-STARS -

Every Asshole in the “I Take Responsibility” video - A collection of imbecilic, dead-eyed actors morally preening by reading words on camera so that everyone knows they hate racism and “take responsibility” for “every not so funny joke, every unfair stereotype” was one of the more nauseating displays in a truly repulsive year. Upon seeing the “I Take Responsibility” video the Aerosmith song “My Fist Your Face” (1985- Done With Mirrors) immediately came to mind. I just want to let the vacuous virtue signaling celebrity twats of “I Take Responsibility” know that I cannot take responsibility for what I will do to them if I ever have the great misfortune to meet them, but I promise you my rage will be more sincere than their phony pandering.

Every Asshole in the “Imagine” video - Imagine being so self-absorbed that you think making a video of you and your wealthy friends singing the saccharine anthem ”Imagine” from your mansions during a pandemic when ordinary people are suffering unimaginable-to-you hardships is a really good idea. Where’s Mark David Chapman when you need him?

NBA/WBNA– This year the NBA emulated the flopping and vacant histrionics of its players by doing an extravagantly exaggerated, dramatically over-the-top embrace of “social justice”.

In the NBA bubble in Orlando – The Happiest Place on Earth,  ‘Black Lives Matter’ was painted on every court and players wore trite woke slogans on the back of their jerseys. The absurdity and obscenity of filthy rich, pampered, dim-witted athletes, safely sealed in five star hotels with all expenses paid, adored by millions of people worldwide, wearing jerseys demanding fans “See Us” and “Love Us” is so astronomical as to be immeasurable.

No one gives a shit about the hapless WNBA because even their all-stars would be beaten in a game against a quality boys high school basketball team, but that didn’t stop them from trying to get attention by desperately embracing social issues as well last Summer. After Jacob Blake was shot by a cop in Wisconsin, WNBA players didn’t wear shirts against police brutality, but instead wore shirts celebrating Jacob Blake. Blake had a warrant out for him for sexual assault and domestic abuse of the woman who called the cops on him the day he was shot. Mr. Blake seems like an odd choice for a female basketball league to hold up as a civil rights icon.

LeBron James - This past year the Greatest Receding Hairline of All-Time proved himself to be a social justice charlatan with testicles the size of raisins. Last season, after then Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protestors, LeBron kissed China’s ass and threw Daryl Morey under the bus in order to keep the Chinese money train rolling.

LeBron claimed he couldn’t speak up on China’s brutality toward Hong Kong protestors and Uighers because he wasn’t informed, but then turned around and said Daryl Morey was uninformed too…which of course doesn’t make any sense. How could LeBron know Morey was uninformed if he himself was uninformed?

The narcissistic neanderthal and integrity deficient Lebron then traded in his Nikes for clown shoes last summer by wearing a Breonna Taylor “Say Her Name” t-shirt and doing an egregiously adolescent and nauseatingly pretentious Wakanda salute when Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman died.

His comments in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the shooting of Jacob Blake about how he was terrified to leave his house (which is a mansion in a gated Beverly Hills community) because cops are hunting black people were so moronically imbecilic as to be absurd, but he upped the ante when in the wake of the police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus Ohio, LeBron posted a picture of the cop who shot her accompanied by a demand for “accountability”.

I believe LeBron when he says he was uninformed about China since he seems perpetually uninformed about pretty much everything. For example, apparently LeBron didn’t know (or care) that the cop in the Ma’Khia Bryant case was saving a young black girls life by by shooting Bryant, who was poised to stab the young black girl her in the chest when she was shot and killed.

Another example of LeBron’s emotionalist buffoonery is his Breonna Taylor fetish…I am willing to bet that LeBron has no idea about the circumstances around that tragic case, such as the fact that Breonna’s boyfriend actually fired the first shot in the battle - wounding a cop, and that Breonna was shot - not in bed as most people believe, but in the hallway next to her boyfriend - who had just fired his weapon.

Look, I am not saying LeBron should shut up and dribble, he should, like anyone, speak his mind, but maybe he should actually get informed before he makes comments on anything.

And if LeBron doesn’t want to be a shameless hypocrite maybe he should stand up for things when it actually costs him something, as opposed to only when it benefits him and his wallet. So maybe if he spoke out against Chinese brutality against Hong Kong protestors and Uighers, then he might have some moral authority when it comes to his comments regarding race and policing…no matter how ill-informed and emotionalists they may be…and they are almost entirely ill-informed and emotionalist.

Anyway…LeBron is a great basketball player and that is evidenced by his being a 17 time NBA all-star…but he is also a gigantic piece of shit, as evidenced by his inclusion on this year’s Piece of Shit All-Star team.

Every Asshole “Health Professional” Who Signed the Letter Telling People to Get Out and Protest Against “Racism” During a Pandemic - These assholes decided to flush their integrity and sell their credibility when they said people should be in lockdown during the pandemic…except if it was to join a protest against “racism”. Of course, these pricks also said to gather for any other reason - especially to protest against the lockdown, was a super spreader event and extremely dangerous (and racist). According to these geniuses having the “correct” politics makes you immune from infection.

Anyone with half a brain in their head could see how detrimental to public health this bit of medical virtue signaling really was…but it took months for anyone in the media to actually even gently question the illogic behind this movement.

So when medical professionals or the media now wonder why people aren’t getting vaccinated or why the public doesn’t trust them…look no further than the action of these pieces of shit for an answer.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!

This article contains previously published material.

©2021

The Trial of the Chicago 7: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Yikes. What an abysmal Sorkinian shitshow.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, recounts the story of the infamous prosecution of a group of famed anti-Vietnam war protestors arrested for inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Among the star-studded ensemble are Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella.

The film, which is streaming on Netflix, has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Sacha Baron Cohen).

The Trial of the Chicago 7 tells an extremely important story, but unfortunately, it is an abysmally crafted, relentlessly hackneyed shitshow of a movie.

One can only speculate as to why such an aggressively trite cinematic venture has been so well received.

Maybe people say they like this movie because they think this is the type of movie they’re supposed to like. In this way The Trial of the Chicago 7 is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln in that It covers a “serious” historical topic meant to convey a noble truth about a current social political issue. Lincoln was a terrible movie too, but that didn’t stop critics from fawning over it during their Obama sugar high. It was like critics endorsed the film in an attempt to avoid seeming to be against the abolition of slavery - as inane as that sounds.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like baby boomer porn where Sorkin and his fellow boomers can signal their historic virtue all over themselves in a frantic fit of masturbatorial self-righteousness. The film allows the auto-erotic boomer fantasy to extend to current issues and protests movements like Black Lives Matter, with climax no doubt gushing forth accompanied by an orgasmic cry of “right side of history!”

Regardless (or as Dictionary.com would now say - ‘irregardless’) of why it is being praised, it is definitely being praised. At the website Rotten Tomatoes the film currently has a 90% critical score and a 91% audience score.

It is at times like these that I feel the world has officially lost its mind. .

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is so cinematically cliched, dramatically defective and pretentiously pedantic it feels like a two hour and ten minute SNL skit.

The film boasts some of the most embarrassing acting of the year. Sacha Baron Cohen is nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for his work as 60’s icon Abbie Hoffman. Cohen looks like a dad who dressed up in in a bad hippie costume to accompany his kids to a Halloween dance. It is painfully embarrassing watching the 49 year old Cohen play acting as the 30 year-old Hoffman. Adding to the suck is the fact that Cohen absolutely tears limb from limb Hoffman’s unique New England accent, and ends up sounding like Borat, a Brooklynite, Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and a posh Brit all rolled into one giant acting shit sandwich.

Eddie Redmayne is just as dreadful as Tom Hayden. Redmayne is a charisma-less acting vampire that drains every scene of even the most remote bit of life. He too mauls an American accent like a newly freed Vegas tiger seeking revenge on his life-long tormentors Siegfried and Roy.

Even Mark Rylance, the great Mark Rylance, churns out a sub-par performance. Rylance plays the iconic civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who was one of the great New York characters of all-time. Rylance’s Kunstler is so far removed from any version of reality as to be criminal. Rylance too never properly wields Kunstler’s distinctive New York dialect. But as my friend Mo Danger pointed out, to Rylance’s credit he at least seems like the only actor in the cast not in on the Sorkinian joke.

The Trial of the Chicago 7’s biggest problem though is the direction of Aaron Sorkin, who simply lacks the requisite cinematic skill to take on such sprawling and complex subject matter.

Sorkin’s ham-fisted, hit-all-the-bullet-points, broad brush, watered down approach drains the dynamic story of any dramatic power. His limp direction also leaves his actors floundering, unable to piece together performances with any dramatic coherence.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like a very special episode of Sorkin’s 90’s remake of Fantasy Island …The West Wing. It is so self-reverential, pandering and dramatically flaccid as to be egregiously cinematically inept.

The piece de resistance of The Trial of the Chicago 7 is that it builds to a cinematic climax where people unironically stand and clap in a courtroom. It’s like Sorkin went all meta and made a movie set in the 1960’s that had the dramatic sensibilities of a high school drama from the 1980’s.

The story of the Chicago 7 is one that needs to be told…maybe in a Netflix mini-series so as to give each character more depth and the conflagration in Chicago in 1968 more context. The Trial of the Chicago 7 fails to adequately recount the time, place, events and characters involved in one of the crazier and more dangerous times in American history, and that failure is entirely on Aaron Sorkin.

My advice is to either skip The Trial of the Chicago 7 or go all in and just hate watch the damn thing, because it is certainly a target rich environment for scorn and cathartic loathing. Either way, this movie is a blight on the cinema landscape and can’t be forgotten soon enough.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 19 - The Social Network

This week’s choice for a quarantine must see re-watch is David Fincher’s nearly decade old masterpiece The Social Network (currently playing on Netflix). This film boasts a remarkable pace, stellar editing, an extraordinary script from Aaron Sorkin, a mesmerizing score from Trent Reznor, as well as incredible performances and masterful direction. Join Barry and I as we breakdown this often under appreciated film that is fascinating to look back upon during our socially distanced quarantine.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA PODCAST: EPISODE 19 - THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Thanks for listening! Stay safe and healthy out there!

©2020

Steve Jobs - A Review : Steve Jobs, 2001 and The Cult of Personality

***WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT!!**

MY RATING : SEE IT IN THE THEATRE!!

"THE TWO MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE ALLIES WIN THE WAR, AND THIS. " - STEVE JOBS

As I sit here at my MacBook Pro, with my iPhone by my side, writing a review of Steve Jobs, the film about the late founder of Apple computers, I have to confess that I really didn't know or care very much about the man prior to seeing the film. My ignorance and ambivalence about Jobs, yet my near complete everyday reliance upon his life's work, is a testament to the magnitude of his achievement and an indictment of me and my incuriosity.  Sadly, I am woefully unqualified to comment on the historical accuracy of Steve Jobs, but thankfully, I am moderately qualified to comment on the dramatic and cinematic worth of the movie. 

Steve Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin and adroitly directed by Danny Boyle, is an exquisitely crafted and impeccably acted film. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Jobs, and boasts very impressive supporting turns from Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg and Seth Rogan.

Michael Fassbender gives a fantastically magnetic and dynamic performance as Jobs. Fassbender is one of the best actors working today and his work as Job's is a tribute to his mastery of his craft and his enormous talent. 

Fassbender's performance is an approximation and not an imitation of Jobs, which is always a wise approach. As I am fond of saying, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the least sincere form of acting"©. Fassbender focuses on the internal emotional reality of Jobs and not on trying to recreate the external appearance of the man. That is not to say that there are no outer manifestations of Fassbender's inner work, there are. For instance, Fassbender alters his voice as he ages Jobs. He hits an oh-so-slightly higher register as a young man and a lower one as an older man, it is done so subtly that it would be nearly imperceptible to anyone not looking for it (or trained in this sort of thing). It isn't a showy thing, but it is an extremely effective one, which is a credit not only to Fassbender's technique but to his artistic integrity.

Fassbender's Jobs is a shark (a symbolic power animal referenced in the film) which is always moving forward and never looking to the past. This manifests literally as Jobs constantly physically walking throughout the story, and figuratively as Jobs frantically running away from his past and his emotional wounds. Stasis is death to Fassbender's Jobs, and when he isn't actively trying to devour his opponents, his enemies or his feelings, he is unwittingly trying to avoid any notions of "regretfulness", a word strikingly evoked in the film by Jobs' daughter. This approach to life leaves Fassbender's Jobs as a single minded business/technological genius, with emotional blind spots the size of his gargantuan ambition. It is not Jobs struggle to conquer history and the tech world that makes the character so imperative, but rather his struggle to understand himself and his existential wounds.

I recently wrote about Jeff Daniels being mis-cast in a bunch of projects where I thought his work was sub-par, such as in Ridley Scott's The Martian and HBO's The Newsroom. In Steve Jobs, I was very pleased to see Daniels give a nuanced and poignant performance as John Sculley, the CEO of Apple and erstwhile father figure to Jobs.  This character, in the hands of a lesser actor, would have been easily overlooked at best or a two-dimensional disaster at worst. 

Kate Winslet plays Joanna Hoffman, Job's right hand woman and confidante, who is a force to be reckoned with. She gives a powerful performance that is laced with a delicate humanity, which makes her the perfect balance to Fassbender's humanity-challenged Jobs. Winslet is the consummate pro, and here she brings all of her formidable talents to bear in creating a character who is able to platonically and powerfully love Steve Jobs, but never be a victim to him.

Michael Stuhlberg and Seth Rogan also give solid supporting performance as Andy Hertzfeld, member of original Mac team and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, respectively. Although, I nearly fell over when I saw a talking empty-head on one of the cable news shows saying that if Rogan doesn't win an Oscar it would be a travesty. Rogan does a fine yet completely unspectacular job as Wozniak. I think that people often get unduly excited when an actor who has consistently been dreadful simply shows up and isn't as awful as usual. Rewarding mediocrity due to familiarity, or worse, confusing mediocrity with greatness, is often a result of lowered expectations and is sadly, a common occurrence across our culture, one need look no further than our politics with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or Hollywood with Matthew McConaughey and George Clooney for proof of that.

WALKING, TALKING AND DRUNKEN MONKEYS

I often find writer Aaron Sorkin's style, which I call "walking and talking…quickly", to be off-putting because it can be so mannered, deliberate and disingenuous. Sorkin's writing style is as if David Mamet and a drunken monkey with a political science degree had a baby that wrote a screwball dramedy with all of the fast paced, witty repartee that genre demands. In the hands of lesser directors, such as on Sorkin's HBO show The Newsroom, Sorkin's writing can be unbearable in it's overbearing self consciousness. But in the hands of a true craftsman and artist, like Danny Boyle with Steve Jobs, or David Fincher with The Social Network, Sorkin's style can become captivating, if not down right hypnotic. 

With Steve Jobs, Sorkin's true stroke of genius comes not in his dialogue but rather in how he structures the story. Instead of falling into the usual traps of the bio-pic, basically showing the highlights of the man's life, Sorkin structures the film like a stage play in three acts, where the characters talk about what has happened between acts but what wasn't shown to the viewer. It is all about how people react and feel about events, not about the events themselves. It is a brilliant way to mine the depths of characters and relationships for all of the emotional drama they are worth. It is also a tribute to Sorkin (and director Danny Boyle) that he respects his audience enough to not feel the need to spoon feed them the usual bio-pic nonsense but rather trusts them to be sophisticated enough to understand context without having it shown to them. Turning the story into a stage play for the screen creates a character study and not a bio-pic, and that is what makes it such a compelling and satisfying film.

STEVE JOBS AND 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

There is a little secret hidden in plain sight about where Sorkin gets his inspiration, whether conscious or unconscious, for the structure of the film, and it is pretty brilliant. The opening of the film shows an old black and white industrial-type of film where Arthur C. Clarke, famed science fiction writer and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, stands in a 1960's computer room surrounded by a gigantic computer that nearly fills the entire room and talks with a young man and a little boy about what the future will look like. Clarke talks of a future where people will have small computers in their homes where they can do work and order theatre tickets and the like right from their computer. It is cool to see Clarke accurately predict the future and to see the amazement on the little boys face at the unlimited prospects in his future. That scene tells us all we need to know about the rest of the film, and I was even wondering as the scene played out, if it would be revealed that the little boy was Jobs in his youth.

This opening scene is a clue as to the blueprint for Steve Jobs. Sorkin uses the exact same structure as Arthur Clarke's and Stanley Kurbick's iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that film is subtly referenced throughout Steve Jobs. 

In 2001, mankind's evolution over thousands of years is covered in three acts. In Steve Jobs, Sorkin uses the same three act, evolutionary leaping structure to show the emotional growth of Jobs the man,  and technological growth brought forth by his company. While Jobs personal evolution and his company's technological evolution are only over a two decade span rather than thousands of years, they are still making as gigantic a leap as mankind does in 2001. Seeing Steve Jobs make emotional evolutionary jumps that are the equal to 2001's thousands of years of evolution only becomes believable if we are sub-consciously attuned to the archetype of mankind's overwhelming need to evolve set forth in 2001. 

In 2001's first act, Kubrick shows us primitive man at the moment he discovers, with the aid of a mysterious monolith, his first tool, which he quickly turns into a weapon to kill his rivals. Act One in Steve Jobs opens backstage of an Apple product launch (the new age monolith!!) in 1982 with Jobs not even admitting to the paternity of his daughter, and denying the child and her mother, any financial support even though his worth is over $440 million. Like the ape-man in 2001 who uses the technological advantage of the first tool to bludgeon his defenseless enemies, Jobs uses his technological advantage to gain wealth and power which he uses to emotionally bludgeon his ex-girlfriend and the daughter he denies.

In Kubrick's 2001 we then make a jump of thousands of years into the future into Act Two where man is colonizing and living in space. Act Two ends with man discovering a monolith on the moon, which is really just a stepping stone to the great discovery revealed in Act Three. In Act Two of Steve Jobs, we are once again backstage at another product launch, this time for Job's new company NeXT, which he started after being fired from Apple. This tech company, NeXt, like the monolith on the moon in 2001, is really just a stepping stone. In Job's master plan he intends to use the NeXT launch to get back on top and in control of Apple. In addition, Job's daughter has grown a bit, and while he is beginning to take an interest in her life, he still isn't capable of truly loving her or emotionally understanding himself. In being blind to the inner complexes that drive him, Jobs is just like mankind in Act Two of 2001, which has not yet evolved enough to truly understand the intelligence they are chasing across the solar system, nor do they understand what drives them to chase it. 

In Act Three of 2001, man and machine (the enigmatic computer HAL) travel into space in order to find the origin of this mysterious monolith near Jupiter. Eventually man and machine, in the form of HAL, do battle, with HAL fighting for supremacy and man fighting for survival. Man must overcome technology, his intellect, in order to integrate it and open up his true emotional self. The film ends with man having gone through a dramatic and personally apocalyptic evolutionary transformation and being reborn as the intellectually and emotionally advanced "Star Child".

In the third act of Steve Jobs, we are once again backstage at a product launch, this time for the iMac, which is a spaceship compared to the animal bone of Apple 2 that came twenty years earlier. In this final act of Steve Jobs, Jobs is finally able to overcome his drive for technological and business success and open his heart to his daughter. For the first time in the film he decides he'd rather start the product launch late in order to talk with his daughter, putting her emotional needs before his business needs. This is symbolic of his overcoming his intellect and his business drive and instead opening his previously underused heart/emotional drive. He then integrates his intellect and technology with his heart/emotion when he tells his music loving daughter he will invent a product for her which will carry thousands of songs, what eventually will become the iPod. Directly after that scene with his daughter, Jobs stands on stage at the product launch with lights and flashbulbs popping all around him. As his daughter looks on, Jobs is engulfed in a luminous glow of otherworldly light, symbolic of his final stage of evolution where he becomes the intellectually and emotionally advanced Star Child.

Steve Jobs, like 2001: a Space Odyssey, teaches us about human evolution on both the external/technological level, and the internal/emotional level. The journey at the center of 2001 is that mankind must go forth into deep space, both outer and inner, in order to truly understand our universe and ourselves. The self knowledge acquired on this galactic grail self-quest is what will propel us to through to our next stage of evolution. Steve Jobs teaches us this same lesson wrapped in a different mythology, that we must explore both our external/intellectual drive and our internal/emotional one. One cannot be a truly evolved human being if one doesn't strive to cultivate both outer and inner forms of development and growth.

"MUSICIANS PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENTS. I PLAY THE ORCHESTRA." - STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs is one of those polished and elegantly crafted films that only master artisans could make. Danny Boyle's flawless and vibrant direction is the key to keeping Sorkin's dialogue, which can be unwieldy in lesser directorial hands, emotionally vital and palpable. Boyle's deft touch and meticulous attention to dramatic pacing, both of the actors and of the camera, create a mesmerizing, seductive and deeply gratifying film.

THE CULT OF TECHNOLOGY AND PERSONALITY

An interesting theme that Boyle explores is the idea of the cult of Steve Jobs. Boyle evokes a sense of the sacred and religious being present in each of the product launches. The audience in the auditoriums chant and move in unison, hungry for Jobs, their Pope, prophet and messiah to share with them his new holy revelations, shrouded on the altar of the stage, which will change their lives forever. Boyle also shows Jobs as being a tyrant and control freak who believes his power should always and every time be unquestioned. Boyle's Jobs has a whiff of L. Ron Hubbard about him, and there is a Jim Jones vibe lurking deep in the heart of both Jobs and his desperate collection of followers and fanatics, whose idolatry of Jobs could easily be turned into zealotry. This cult of Steve Jobs, could easily be the cult of any guru, be they business, technology, political or spiritual based. Boyle's glimpse into Steve Jobs, the man behind the myth, is a pulling back of the curtain to reveal the fragility at the heart of the man who yearned for, and was placed upon, the pedestal of genius.

In conclusion, Steve Jobs is a great film and is well worth your time and hard earned money. Go see it in the theatre, if for no other reason than to watch the theatre light up with iPhones coming alive after the film has ended. As enjoyable and well made a film as Steve Jobs is, audience members compulsively re-attaching themselves to Steve Jobs' technology the moment the film ends is more a tribute to the man's life and genius than any film could ever be.

  ©2015