SeanC
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Todd Haynes' latest blend of satire/melodrama is loosely inspired by the lives of Vili Fualaau and the late pedophile Mary Kay Letourneau. We're introduced to the household of Joe (Charles Melton, a long way from Riverdale) and Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore, longtime Haynes collaborator). Gracie molested Joe when he was 13 and an employee at the pet shop she managed, and after becoming pregnant by him and serving a jail sentence, they married upon her release and had two more children. Into this inherently tense situation arrives Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), the star of a TV medical procedural Norah's Ark, who is going to be playing Gracie in a TV movie and wants to learn more about the subject of her portrayal.
A number of reviews and comments have described May December as camp, zeroing in on the impact of the deliberately discordant, melodramatic use of music at certain points, though Haynes himself has disagreed with this and has called the score an attempt to jolt the audience's engagement level. I'm not sure the use of music really adds much to the proceedings, but in any case, there's a number of different things at play here, from a comedic examination of the media industry's use of scandals as grist for entertainment, to a bit of a satire of method acting, to a more serious examination of how the stunted Joe is pushed into reckoning with the seriousness of what was done to him.
Awards discussion for the film is rapidly cohering into a push for Melton, who is excellent as Joe, the film's most obviously sympathetic character. Moore and Portman are both in top form as well, though what they're asked to do is a lot less naturalistic and a bit more opaque from an audience perspective. At times it seems like Haynes is playing with a dynamic akin to Ingmar Bergman's Persona (see: the poster), other times calling back to the Douglas Sirk melodramas that he is so obviously inspired by and most directly mimicked in Far from Heaven.
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Not sure why they needed Nelson Rockefeller's first name, there's only one Rockefeller VP.
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Two Belgian women in the Grand Prix Final, what a time to be alive. And both actually from and training in Belgium, at that.
Canada gets three of the six dance teams, another national best.
Guignard & Fabbri get bushwhacked in Japan by the IAM mafia.
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I enjoyed it a fair bit.
I liked Hunter Schafer as Tigris (it seems like it took a few years for Hollywood to start putting her in things, unlike some of her Euphoria costars), though when you consider that both Tom Blyth and Fionnula Flanagan were clearly cast with an eye to somewhat echoing Donald Sutherland's accent/diction, plunking her Valley Girl-adjacent accent in amongst them was slightly funny.
Rachel Zegler was pretty good. Her character is a bit on the theatrical side, which I suspect turns off some people, but she seems to be doing a Loretta Lynn impression for the music.
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15 hours ago, peridot said:
I know in the movies people knew about Monarch, but I guess the show is set before hand?
This is set right after Godzilla's initial appearance.
Kurt Russell's character is looking quite spry for a 90-year-old, though this is a sci-fi property, so there could obviously be any number of explanations for that.
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1 minute ago, honeywest said:
I must have misunderstood Johnny Weir. But it does seem as if many of the skaters are overemoting directly in front of the judges.
One of the optional choreo elements is the character step, which goes barrier-to-barrier and is most typically done at centre facing the judging panel (though you can see the much more uncommon long axis version in Carreira & Ponomarenko's free program). But skaters don't have to do it, they just like to.
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13 hours ago, honeywest said:
and I hate the requirement that ice dancers skate right up to the judges.
It's not a requirement.
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Happy to see Sofia Boutella getting a lead role in a major production like this.
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Lajoie & Lagha stage their second dramatic near-upset of one of the teams ahead of them in Canada (after 2023 nationals, where they almost beat Fournier Beaudry & Sorensen). It's been very exciting watching these two's gradual rise over the years, they're IAM's first true development project (as opposed to an already-established senior team).
Tough Grand Prix season for South Korea so far.
Nice to see Peng back competing in pairs, though her new partner has some work to do.
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On 11/6/2023 at 1:43 AM, JAYJAY1979 said:
I also think maybe Coppola wanted to not present anything that would make Priscilla less angelic (i.e. extramarital affairs, etc).
2 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:I didn't read the book, so I'm not sure what the facts are. But it seemed to me that the audience was being allowed to infer that Priscilla had something going on with the karate teacher, from the way she interacted with him in the scene with him and some of her friends.
As you say, it's clearly inferred, just not something Coppola focuses on. I don't think it's out of a desire to avoid making Priscilla look bad -- at that point, Elvis has been cheating on her basically the whole time, her having affairs is firmly in "sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander" territory.
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53 minutes ago, Avaleigh said:
Last comment--I have to say that my faith in the sport was somewhat restored when I saw that Gubanova got a level 1 on her layback. If I'd only seen her do that spin and nothing else, I honestly would not believe that she is an elite level skater. Her coaches have much to answer for if they think that's acceptable.
Gubanova has chronic back problems; it's been very evident with her spins the past two seasons.
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Dance
The French dance podium is a literal repeat of the previous year's podium, though I wouldn't say any of it was inaccurate.
I've become a big fan of Lopareva & Brissaud's Mylene Farmer RD, which is one of the only instances of teams using non-English-language 1980s music. It's nice to see a French team repping for French artists, it's not like the 80s only happened in the USA and Britain.
Below the podium, happy to see Lim & Quan continuing to make strides.
Women
Among the ladies, Nina Pinzarrone emerged on the junior scene during the pandemic so she didn't compete as much as she otherwise would have in those years, and then injury cost her her Grand Prix debut last year, so this was a great start. Loena must be so proud.
Cool for Sumiyoshi to finally land the quad, though that was a generous rotation call.
Isabeau's reaction to staying in first overall was cute.
Two of the three French skaters did really well in the free skate, including Serna having what I'd call her best ever.
Men
Now that was a blazing finale. Britschgi with what will probably be the best fourth-place performance of the Grand Prix season, Kagiyama with a solid start to his comeback, then Malinin with what will almost certainly be the best silver medal performance of the season, and Siao Him Fa with a spectacular title defense. If the actual World Championship podium skate that well, it will have been a great event.
Gogolev, iffy free skate, but I think on the whole this event was a positive for him.
Pairs
Woo, Lia & Trennt! I had thought they might win Skate America, but they did get their Grand Prix gold eventually, and by unexpectedly unseating the reigning World bronze medalists.
The Kovalevs are now two-time Grand Prix medalists, remarkably.
Shame about Ellie Kam.
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15 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:
Variety got its hands on some emails that Lisa Marie sent to Sofia Coppola a few weeks before production started. Lisa Marie read an early version of the script and was not pleased.
Pretty juicy article, and I'm assuming accurate, since Coppola was asked for comment and her representative quoted from Coppola's reply to the emails.
All due respect to the deceased, but she either was not alive or was a toddler during the events depicted.
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Elvis' life has been the subject of many, many tellings at this point, and to varying degrees they have developed an aesthetic derived from his own music, so Coppola's signature dreamlike stillness (and mix of anachronistic soundtrack choices and select hits from other singers of the period; due to a disagreement with Elvis Presley Enterprises, the King's own music isn't available, but honestly I don't know that it would fit anyway) stands out as much as the shift in focus to Priscilla.
It is interesting to see what aspects of Priscilla's life most interested Coppola. The exact nature of Priscilla and Elvis' relationship has obviously been subject to much speculation (both prurient and otherwise) -- indeed, that's obviously what the film is about -- but after a lot of emphasis on the main character's sexual frustrations early on, both the eventual consummation of their marriage and the decision to conduct her own extramarital affairs (after many such transgressions by Elvis himself) are largely skipped over; the latter, especially, would probably have been considered a pivotal story beat by most filmmakers.
Cailee Spaeny is really terrific here, playing from ages 14 to 27 convincingly.
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On 10/30/2023 at 11:28 PM, annzeepark914 said:
I don't think the audience is loving the ballads. They sure light up when upbeat, fun music starts up.
Those are program types that by design aim for different audience reactions.
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1 hour ago, Avaleigh said:
The spiral sequences only enhanced their programs, they certainly didn't detract from them.
There are tons of old programs from the mandatory spiral area that stop dead in their tracks with the spirals. And it's not like people can't still do them if they want to and think it fits the choreo sequence, etc.
There were certainly skaters who did them well, but there are as many who can do the knee slides, etc. well.
18 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:Vocals screeching throughout the arena, dreary ballads that mean something special to the skater but mean nothing to the audience.
The use of more contemporary music I would say has greatly increased the meaning of programs to the audience.
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2 hours ago, Avaleigh said:
Glad to know it's not a requirement, but it's still too bad that everyone feels the need to do the same thing even when it isn't well executed.
You could apply that same reasoning to virtually any element, could you not? Most competitors will be attempting various challenging things to varying degrees of success.
Like, there were very few good spiral sequences back when they were mandatory for women.
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Piper & Paul looked great to start the year, despite the shorter off-season.
The US dance scene below Chock & Bates is remarkably unsettled right now, between Hawayek & Baker’s absence, Green & Parsons’ surprisingly tough start, and the other young teams jockeying for position.
Allison Reed boldly goes where none of her siblings had gone before — a Grand Prix podium.
On 10/27/2023 at 9:58 PM, Avaleigh said:Sidenote: It's kind of annyoing that it's apparently a requirement for skaters to have a moment where they're sliding around on their knees even when it doesn't jive with the choreography.
It’s not a requirement. Knee slides have just become popular choreographic features in the past few seasons, inspired (as so much is) by ice dance choreo.
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9 hours ago, luna1122again said:
The book doesn't include any information that Ernest was adding something to her insulin, so I'm not sure where that came from, or if it was a construct of Scorsese's
I'd call it less a construct than a logical guess. The Hale conspiracy was poisoning Mollie; the most logical person to have been doing it is Ernest, though he never personally admitted to it.
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Those medals are hideously tacky.
Really sad for Amber, I really wanted that for her, given this is her home turf. The first half was so good.
Conversely, great to see Loena turn the corner on the previous season, which she's said was very tough on her mentally. And Niina wins Estonia's first-ever Grand Prix medal a few years after almost dying of aplastic anemia.
In the dance event, Marjorie and Zach barely had an off-season because he had a shoulder injury, and they did not looked prepared at Nepela a few weeks ago, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations for them here, and they definitely impressed me with how much work they'd done in a short amount of time. The Michael Jackson RD feels a lot more filled out (though some of the levels still need work).
Also happy to see Lia and Trennt get their first podium. It's remarkable to me how much stronger this partnership is than his preview one; I haven't been this excited for a Canadian pair team in a long time.
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On 10/21/2023 at 2:59 PM, kiddo82 said:
DiCaprio does his usual, I feel like we've seen him give this type of performance before
I disagree there. Even when he's played a villain role (which, the last one would have been The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013) he hasn't played somebody this stupid.
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27 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:
Haven't seen Barbie yet so I'm not sure I fully got Pete as Drug Addict Comedian Ken.
I don't think there's much to get about it, beyond that it's a parody of this musical number:
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10 hours ago, Slade347 said:
The thing I noticed was just how short both of her songs were. Were they even five minutes combined?
TikTok has been shifting a lot of artists' song lengths to decidedly under three minutes, akin to 50s radio singles.
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14 hours ago, Laurie4H said:
The man’s actions were crazy but the woman didn’t have any redeeming qualities.
Huh? She genuinely tries to be supportive of her partner and his career, and is undermined at every turn by his aggressive insecurity.
This isn't really a movie about heroes, but she's hardly devoid of likeable characteristics.
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May December (2023)
in Movies
Forgot to mention, I laughed at the final gag that Elizabeth was doing all this seemingly in-depth character research for what looks like a cheap Lifetime-type project.