Simon Boccanegra

'84 was arguably the best year of that decade for pop music. New faces and old, just about everyone who comes to mind when we think of pop music of the '80s was either just breaking through or having a peak year.

Katie Beth Hall (Lil' Kim) is a young-looking 17 to my eye (or a young-looking 16, assuming she shot these scenes last year), but she's about right for the age Kim was supposed to be in spring or summer 1984, suggested by "The Reflex" on the car radio and the expiration of the mother's registration sticker. Kim's date of birth of record is February 13, 1968. per the ID shown in "JMM," the episode with her marriage to Jimmy.

I believe this one was a year after the other one, going by the pop songs they took the trouble to put in. The other one had "Affair of the Heart" by Rick Springfield (a hit from summer 1983) and this one had "The Reflex" by Duran Duran (a hit from summer 1984). Lil' Kim is a convincing young Rhea Seehorn too. The look, the mannerisms. I'm enjoying the season, but the pacing of the storytelling had me thinking Waiting for Lalo.

This isn't much of a spoiler, but the actor who plays Lyle, Gus's most frequently seen Los Pollos Hermanos employee, has two episodes listed this season. They are #5, which we just had (he apologized for dropping a tray), and #8, which would be on the other side of the break.

I think 2005 is when the plate will expire, and that we're still in May 2004...which we've been ever since "Dedicado a Max" and "Wexler v. Goodman" in the middle of last season. An eventful month.

RIP, Mike Hagerty. I saw him in so many TV shows, but I always think of him as "the AAMCO guy." Earlier in that episode, at the dinner party, he makes a toast to "friends." Then he says to Larry, "Friends. That was another good show. Did you have anything to do with that one?" It was a nice ad lib/in-joke, because he had a recurring role on Friends as the building's superintendent, Mr. Treeger.

I think that that part went beyond Cliff himself. Anyone in the area who saw the man behind the wheel would see someone matching Howard's, not Jimmy's, description. Even someone who saw the car at a traffic light and knew what Howard looked like might have been fooled at a distance. Especially with an obvious-looking prostitute in the passenger seat to draw the eye. On the episode itself: It was the kind of breather that was needed after "Rock and a Hard Place," and really the whole first three. Still, the dread and paranoia (Kim's and Gus's) were very well done, and I liked the misdirection: the "Who are these people?" opening; the cut to a weird Jimmy/Howard hybrid walking down the sidewalk right after Howard tells his analyst he's been having a dream, making some of us think for a few seconds that Howard's narrating a nightmare of turning into Jimmy. Rhea Seehorn did a great job her first time out. The episode was both distinctive and BCS "house style." The first Mike/Kim scene didn't disappoint. I've read the interpretation that Mike's "sterner stuff" comment was flattery or manipulation, but I thought he really was impressed with her when he listened in on the Lalo confrontation last season. Her confronting his surveillance team cemented the impression.

Spotted in the comment section of the New York Times recap/review. Sweet.

I do like a challenge. The concerto itself is over 40 minutes long, but it's in three movements, and all of the music we heard was from the third and final one (30:03 on Zimerman/Bernstein above). When Howard is greeting Tony, the finale is just getting underway. The orchestra is making its first statement of the big main theme, around 30:55 on Z/B. There are two time lapses, as you note, while Tony drives. But he’s only driving for a couple minutes. The first lapse only takes us to the pianist’s first statement of the movement’s secondary theme (31:43 on Z/B). I’m not sure about an exact spot for the second lapse, but we're within the pianist’s long solo (maybe the vicinity of 32:44). When Huell is saying “Let’s go, yo,” and there's the suspense with Tony going back down the stairs, the pianist is playing a tremolo with light orchestral accompaniment (36:13 on Z/B). The pianist then launches into the movement's main theme again, and then the orchestra comes back in full force. Anyway, it gets across that it’s a fast job. And maybe we’re supposed to connect Howard’s solicitousness with Tony about his night school, that kind of patronizing “Go get ‘em, tiger!” attitude, with the way he was with Jimmy in his mail-room days.

For anyone who didn't recognize it and cares, Howard's driving music (which we kept getting during the valet scam) was the final movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"). A pet peeve of mine is that when characters in TV shows and movies listen to classical music, while it's usually a great piece, it's always so "obvious." But I didn't mind here. It fits Howard, on top of the world. And of course, the cutting of that sequence was brilliant. Yeah, I'm looking for anything else to talk about right now. A tip of the cap to Michael Mando for his wonderful performances over five seasons plus. And at least Nacho went out with courage to rival that of another guy facing certain execution in the desert, in the other series.

Larry David confirmed Sunday night that season 12 is coming. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/curb-your-enthusiasm-season-12-1235229603/ I'm going to be optimistic and hope he realized that season 11 was the patchiest season yet, and he doesn't want to go out like that. Of course, season 12 may not turn out to be the end either.

Yes. The first thing he says when he takes the stage in 2004 is "Don't worry. They have me under a restraining order." Then there's the breath spray at envelope time. Then he and Charlize Theron (the winner, for Monster) appear to banter a little bit while they're doing the traditional hug-and-peck. It sounds as though she says something like "We're good" and he laughs. My issue is that all of it together is kind of horning in on the moment of the 2004 Best Actress winner, making himself too prominent. If I'd been advising him, I'd have told him just to make a classy, above-board presentation and move on from the previous year, rather than making people think about it again. But...eh.

Berry has said since then that she wasn't really comfortable, but she just "went with it." I was watching that ceremony with about eight other people. I remember we were getting news updates about the war during the breaks. I was very happy when Brody's name was called, because he'd been outstanding in The Pianist, and he was the new guy. The other four nominees were respected veterans. Each already had an Oscar; two had more than one. Plus, Brody had my sympathy because The Thin Red Line had been touted a few years earlier as his potential star-making opportunity, before Terrence Malick all but edited him out of the movie. Brody was far from the odds-on favorite, even though he'd been picking up momentum toward the end. That win (like Hilary Swank's for Boys Don't Cry) was one that probably would not have happened in a shorter awards season. In fact, the following year was the first Oscar ceremony to be moved back to February rather than the traditional early spring. But in 2003, more and more people gave a late look to The Pianist. Neither I nor anyone watching with me commented that Brody's kiss was assault or even anything too inappropriate, but we didn't know anything about their relationship -- for all we knew, they were close friends. We also kind of took our cues from Berry, who played it like a pro, looking at the audience afterward like "Wow, what a kiss!" I then read some commentary in the days following, and I noted that while some saw it as "exuberance" and "getting carried away in the moment," others thought it crossed a line. So it was mildly controversial even in 2003. When Brody presented Best Actress the following year and made a show of getting breath spray out before opening the envelope, a lot of people were unamused. I don't think either Carrey or Brody would do that if he won an award today. There has been a lot of talking and a lot of listening about harassment and boundaries and such. And that's why those conversations are good. More people today see kissing the presenter as overstepping. I would have said in 2003, 1997, or any prior point that hitting the presenter in the face was wrong, and I’d have expected that to be a universally held opinion. But acquaintances on social media as well as celebrities like Tiffany Haddish suggest otherwise. And there's no going back to long-ago Oscars and finding examples of anyone hitting the presenter in the face, because there haven't been any. Finally, I don't think anyone has to have led a blameless life to have an opinion or voice an opinion on something they see in the present day (although I can do without OJ's remarks on any issue).

I realize there's a good reason there hasn't been much talk about this, because the story on page one was in huge screaming font, but: I just read over the text of Smith's acceptance speech to refresh my memory. He congratulates himself for "protecting" the three female actors who played his character's wife and daughters, and he talks about his having "made" King Richard. A viewer would easily infer he was the star/director. Not a word for Reinaldo Marcus Green, who actually directed it. I guess Green is supposed to fall under the catch-all of "all the cast and crew." That's a pretty bad omission. Jessica Chastain even thanked the director of the Tammy Faye movie ("who created a space that inspired creativity and love and courage"), and if ever there were a star-initiated project with rote direction...

When I saw Nocturnal Animals, I really did think that Amy Adams (besides playing the main character) was playing the wife in the story-within-the-story. Then I found it had been Isla Fisher. Most of Fisher's part takes place in a car on a dark road at night, which didn't help.

Ha ha. No, this is still the much-delayed second, which wrapped back in June 2019. It was originally supposed to have been finished long before that. Then...well, you know. 2020. I wasn't a big fan of the original film and don't have much interest in the new one. I've just been gawking at the messy rollout. I think Cruise and/or Paramount have been hoping for some kind of optimal old-times circumstance in which to open the thing.

I think the idea behind the advice is that when you have everything going your way and are on top of the world, you can get full of yourself and be tempted by bad ideas, bad judgment. But there's something I find off-putting in the way Will Smith drops Denzel Washington's name. Smith is as old now as Washington was in 2008, and it doesn't seem that way. It's as if he's still holding on to something. When he's not in character as someone like Richard Williams, we're supposed to think he's a just-slightly-older Fresh Prince. Washington would always pay respect to predecessors like Poitier on appropriate occasions, but he didn't act like a perpetual kid new to the business who needed mentoring. Is Smith helping along the young actors who are following in his footsteps, after his 35 years or so as a celebrity? A better question this week: Would we want that?

Yes. That was announced as something Disney would be going into production with, and there were retractions almost immediately. Strange. There was a long period when it seemed someone influential really wanted Garner to happen as a beloved, above-the-title, A-list star, and was going to keep trying with wildly different vehicles until something clicked. I didn't get it. It seemed to peter out after the Arthur remake.

There was a two-part joke on the Hollywood satire Bojack Horseman (funniest TV series of the last ten years). In one episode, a character says, "A doctor heals. A DJ spins. Jessica Chastain takes whatever gig Amy Adams says no to." Later, a different character says, "A doctor heals. A DJ spins. Bryce Dallas Howard takes the gigs Jessica Chastain says no to." (Come to think of it, one of those characters was guest-voiced by Wanda Sykes.)

I've always felt they take themselves very seriously. And especially in her case, I struggle to see the justification. I agree he doesn't owe her an apology, but per "sources familiar with the Oscar ceremony," Rock's bit was not rehearsed; he was just riffing. https://screenrant.com/oscars-chris-rock-will-smith-joke-not-rehearsed/ If true, it may account for the Jada joke and his ribbing of the Bardem/Cruz couple being below his usual standard, if he was just looking at who was in his eyeline and saying the first thing to come to mind. It wouldn't have been hard to get a camera on the Smith table for an instant reaction. All nominees and their significant others were up front. Two and a half hours into this slog, I'm sure they knew where the Smiths were.

I like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's take. https://kareem.substack.com/p/will-smith-did-a-bad-bad-thing?s=r

Same. The Eyes of Tammy Faye was, IMO, the worst movie nominated for anything in the major categories (acting x4, writing x2, director, picture). I try to keep up and see everything in contention, and that's the kind of movie I dread most every year: a biopic of the quality of what used to be made-for-TV, framing an awards-chasing performance. I've liked Chastain in a lot of things, and I'm happy for her even so. I just would rather see her winning acting awards for projects like The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, Zero Dark Thirty, or that HBO remake of Scenes from a Marriage.

Yes. Rock's a guy, so, unfortunately, he would be ridiculed if he talked about being victimized, in the manner of the woman on Real World: Seattle who was slapped on camera by a male castmate. He'd have no cred anymore, especially as a Black comic. Guys are "supposed to" either hit back or get over it. Just to give a brief summary of that RW event, the young woman (Irene) had decided to leave the house prematurely, and her relationship with a castmate named Stephen had gone from friendly and flirtatious to conflict-ridden. She said goodbye to Stephen last, and she told him, "A marriage between you and I [sic] would never work. You know that, Stephen, because you're a homosexual." (Stephen was pretty obviously in the closet, and he did come out many years later.) After initially appearing stunned, then yelling some abusive things at her, he retaliated by chasing after her and slapping her face. She's talked/written since then about how upsetting it is that MTV plays the moment over and over as a great moment in television. She's said that even though she wasn't physically injured, she had nightmares and flashbacks, et cetera, and she still can't believe the crew just stood by and didn't intervene. A lot of the reaction I'm seeing to Smith/Rock on the internet is very similar to the reaction to Stephen/Irene 24 years ago. There were always people arguing she brought it on herself by saying what she said, that her taunting him about her perception of his sexuality (something he was obviously in turmoil over) was cruel in itself. Other people took the position that nothing justifies physical violence, and he should have been arrested and charged or, at the very least, not allowed to remain in the house and finish out the season. Ironically, Chris Rock once used that incident for standup material, leading Stephen to boast (misleadingly) that Rock had "given [him] props."

Yeah, those (Rock's 2016 jokes about the Smith couple) are pretty sharp. Much better than "GI Jane" and the one about Cruz and Bardem being married nominees. He was either off his game this year or someone else supplied his material.

I suspect he would not have if someone else had made the same joke, but the Smiths have had beef with Chris Rock for years. Jada Pinkett-Smith was a target of his Oscar humor in 2016 as well. That was the year Pinkett-Smith said she was boycotting the ceremony because the nominees were not diverse enough (and her husband had been snubbed for his leading role in Concussion). Rock said, "Jada got mad, said she’s not coming. Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited.” Then he said Will not being nominated for Concussion was an outrage on par with Will getting $20 million for Wild Wild West (the 1999 debacle).