Arts Reviews

The third series of the hit comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building has arrived on Hulu, to the same critical acclaim as the previous two installments, and the adventures of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez show few signs of coming to an end. This time the trio are joined by none other than acting royalty Meryl Streep, playing Loretta, a plucky but frustrated actress who has never advanced to the big time, and Paul Rudd, the supposedly nicest man in Hollywood, deliberately cast against type as the obnoxious and entitled star of the show that Short is directing on Broadway, which he is hoping will restore his fortunes: a desire cruelly frustrated by Rudd’s character dropping dead on opening night.

How should we assess the reputation of a late-career movie director? In the case of Roman Polanski, who turns ninety on August 18, we can clearly tick the box denoting a solid body of work. He’s responsible for half a dozen enduring films, and one — 2002’s The Pianist — that rightly won him an Academy Award. Readers may have their own candidate, but for me Polanski’s first full-length feature, 1962’s Knife in the Water, remains at the top of the list. It’s a beautifully crafted, if at times noticeably low-budget, thriller that offers the classic Polanskian brew of claustrophobia, latent menace, voyeurism, class antagonisms and sexual tension, in this case set aboard a small yacht.

I must confess, I often forget Rolling Stone magazine still exists. Once the zeitgeist-surfing Holy Writ of American counter-culture, it hosted the pioneering writers of the boomer generation: Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, P.J. O’Rourke, Hunter S. Thompson. Even as recently as 2020 the magazine boasted accomplished journalists such as Matt Taibbi. But over five decades, the magazine withdrew into the Establishment, just as their boomer readers did. And every now and then the Rolling Stone’s pale cadaver makes a misjudged groaning gasp for life, if only to remind us it’s not quite dead. The rag mustered one such gasp this weekend.

Ask your average man on the street — or at least your average clued-up man with a decent knowledge of modern Hollywood — about the films of William Friedkin, who has died aged eighty-seven, and he will confidently sing the praises of Friedkin’s legendary pictures, The French Connection and The Exorcist. Then if he is pressed on the other eighteen films Friedkin directed, ranging from the excellent and underrated to the dismal, and a look of panic is likely to come over his face before he excuses himself and rushes into a nearby subway (or, if he is in New York, flees to an overground railway in homage to the legendary car chase scene in The French Connection). It is your choice whether you do a Popeye Doyle and head off in frantic pursuit, or leave him be.

When TV is in trouble, it runs to one group. They usually have big hair and even bigger silicon boobs. They also possess filthy mouths, drink rosé like water and have rich husbands. They are the Housewives — and in dry spells, on Sunday afternoons, or in the middle of a writers’ and actors’ strike, you will see their ilk plastered on your screen more than the news. There are plenty to choose from: there are eleven Real Housewives franchises in the US, twenty international versions and twenty-seven spin offs.  But will the Housewives continue to be the entertainment executive's solution to a strike-induced content drought? Or are they set to join the picket lines? The simultaneous Hollywood writer and actor strikes which started in May are gaining traction and glamor.

The death of actor Paul Reubens of cancer at the age of seventy was an oddly low-key departure for a man who created one of the twentieth century’s iconic comic characters, and also found himself mired in scandal that threatened to destroy his career, and to a large extent took him away from the A-list fame that he would have expected to attain. Yet throughout his more than four-decade career, Reubens was nothing if not a survivor, even a fighter. The fact that incidents that would have ruined most other men were treated by him as obstacles to be overcome indicated both his resilience and — to some — a refusal to kowtow to the expected demands of the industry that both made and ruined him.

2023 has the summer of unruly concertgoers. So far, bras, phones and a woman’s ashes have been thrown, pelted, and flung at the likes of Bebe Rexha, Drake, Kelsea Ballerini, Kid Cudi, Pink and Harry Styles. Now that Cardi B has become the latest victim, the celebrities are finally fighting back.   On Saturday, Cardi B was performing her 2018 hit “Bodak Yellow” at Drai’s Beach Club in Las Vegas when a concertgoer threw her drink at the rapper. Cardi B immediately hurled her microphone into the audience before unleashing a string of expletives. Cockburn commends Cardi for her excellent aim — she hit the culprit squarely in the chest.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlYU3Lpx9b0&ab_channel=CNN Cardi had warmed up her throwing arm the night before.

If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was the subtle message of Eldorado, a documentary that pretended to inform us about the real-life background sexual milieu to Cabaret and Babylon Berlin, but was really much more interested in promoting its political view that Weimar Germany with its sexual promiscuity, rampant drug use and anything-goes view on "gender" represented some kind of paradise on Earth which we should seek to emulate. A voice-over told us what to think: "They feel intimidated by this rapid change. The pace of change is a source of frustration to just about everybody. If you’re a radical, then change is happening much too slowly for you.

If you saw the Barbie movie this week, chances are you enjoyed Michael Cera's performance as the long forgotten Allan doll. Cockburn must admit he doesn’t have much experience with kids’ toys (thanks to his lawyers, who fight paternity suits like pitbulls), but even he’s surprised at how lucrative a market the doll market is becoming. After its opening weekend, where Barbie raked in an estimated $155 million, now anyone with an Allan doll can make their own small fortune by selling it. Over the weekend, several eBay listings for old Allan dolls increased their prices. Before the film came out, some were priced as low as $30; now, the valuation has increased to over $300.  Since the movie's release, Allan has turned into a fan favorite.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon — thought of by many as just idle chatter on the internet — has enduring power. Last weekend, Barbie and Oppenheimer earned a combined $511 million in global box office receipts; an unprecedented number where neither film is a superhero picture or a sequel. Barbie made more money, on the grounds that it’s an hour shorter and is PG-13 rated, but the vast box office success of the R-rated Oppenheimer, which made over $170 million in its opening weekend, is testament both to Barbenheimer excitement, and to the film’s very own brand: its powerful writer-director-producer, Christopher Nolan.  James Cameron aside, it is hard to think of any filmmaker who wields such power and influence in contemporary Hollywood.

As millions of people across the world rush into cinemas this week to see Christopher Nolan’s latest epic thriller Oppenheimer, one notable country will not be part of the film’s initial release window despite the relevant subject matter — Japan. For reasons that are still unclear, Universal Pictures has not announced a Japanese release date. Yet if any place deserves to see a film based on the life of the theoretical physicist who played an essential role in developing the atomic bombs which ended World War Two, it should be the country that was most affected by them. Hollywood films being delayed for release in Japan is a very common occurrence, and it rarely ever has anything to do with politics.