Monday, October 7, 2019

Weekend box office and Rip Torbn

first family material

Above is  Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "First Family Material?" from Sunday.

Now let's note the box office for the weekend that just ended.  From BOX OFFICE MOJO:

1NJoker (2019)WB$96,202,337-4,374-$21,994$96,202,337-1
21AbominableUni.$11,921,855-42.2%4,248+6$2,806$37,754,970$752
32Downton AbbeyFocus$7,989,920-44.3%3,548+158$2,252$73,616,855-3
43HustlersSTX$6,393,824-43.9%3,030-478$2,110$91,415,704$204
54It: Chapter TwoWB (NL)$5,317,529-48.1%3,163-448$1,681$202,167,686-5
67JudyRAtt.$4,598,798+57.7%1,458+997$3,154$9,057,241-2
75Ad AstraFox$4,191,582-58.1%2,910-550$1,440$43,297,350-3
86Rambo: Last BloodLGF$3,599,858-58.1%2,900-718$1,241$39,873,753$503
9NWar (2019)Yash$1,607,627-305-$5,271$2,114,917-1
108Good BoysUni.$890,095-57.0%1,006-497$885$82,032,715$208

First up, JOKER.  I enjoyed it and praised it ("JOKER ").  It's a good movie.  The worrywarts were insisting that the opening of the film would inspire violence.  Didn't happen, did it?  In fact, all I see is 2 people arrested in Chicago for smoking and disturbing the film.

The thing that makes me the happiest, though, is AD ASTRA falling to number seven in the third week and still not near $50,000,000 in ticket sales.  JOKER has almost $100 million in ticket sales in just three days of ticket sales.  After three weeks, AD ASTRA doesn't have half that much.

In "Daddy issues," I noted how worthless that film was.  It's a boring movie with a boring Brad  Pitt who looks like all the shine and sheen has been rubbed off -- he is not aging well.  Reality is that Brad was never box office.  Every now and then, he'd end up with a hit.  Usually not acting very well but while he had his young looks, many people would pay for tickets to his films.

I'm also glad GOOD BOYS has done so well, $82 million for a film with a small budget, a kids' movie rated R.  In "GOOD BOYS," I noted that it was one of the best films of the year.

Another film I've called one of the best -- and the best so far this year -- is HUSTLERS (see "HUSTLERS") and I'm thrilled that it's already up to $91 million.  And look at DOWNTON ABBY's success, $73 million.  (I covered it in "DOWNTON ABBEY.")

HUSTLERS, GOOD BOYS and DOWNTON ABBEY were all strong films.  But more to the point, they were nothing like the other films the studios were releasing since the start of May.  That should be a lesson about the need for real variety in the summer offerings.

A slate of superhero films doesn't leave us hungry to buy tickets.  We like variety.

In other news, at the age of 84, comedian Rip Taylor is dead.  Taylor was gay and had a tizzy when someone would note that.  I remember him mainly from one episode of WILL & GRACE.  It was when Jack was working for the gay cable channel.  They needed a gay icon to do their commercial and be their spokesperson.  Jack wanted a TV commercial actor from years ago who had fallen on hard times (played by Victor Garber) while the cable channel wanted Rip Torn.  He did that episode in 2003.  And he played himself.

So I was shocked to read this at WIKIPEDIA:

Personal life

In 2005, Taylor appeared as the grand marshal of the Washington, D.C. Capital Pride parade.[13] When Taylor had been referred to as "openly gay"[14] in a 2009 interview for "Ask the Flying Monkey", Brent Hartinger recalled receiving an email from Taylor stating: "You don't know me to summarize I am openly gay. I don't know you're not an open heroin user. You see how that works? Think before you write." Taylor was married for a number of years to Las Vegas showgirl Rusty Rowe, whom he divorced in the early 1960s.[15][16][17]
Taylor was a close personal friend of entertainer Liberace, spent time with him, and knew him well.[18] Taylor cut the ribbon at the Las Vegas estate auction of Liberace's belongings and personal effects in 1988.[19]
At the time of Taylor's death, he had been in a long-term relationship with Robert Fortney.[20]

Six years later, he was getting pissy about being called gay?  Drama!


One more thing, Ava and C.I.'s "TV: She owns the night" just went up.  They're covering BATWOMAN which just started airing on THE CW.  (I didn't catch it last night but I'm going to watch it after I finish this.)


Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Monday, October 7, 2019.  It's a snapshot that mentions Carly Simon, Aretha Franklin, Gore Vidal, Iraqi protesters, Hunter Biden and the supreme idiot Alyssa Milano.


Let's start with the race in the US for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  And let's start with one of the country's biggest losers, Alyssa Milano.

She was a child actress, she was not a child star.  No studio came rushing to her saying, "Let's build a film around you!!!"  Not even a movie about a child who ends up in an adult body.  Drew Barrymore was a child star.  Movies were built around her.  As a young adult, both Drew and Alyssa starred in films about Amy Fisher.  Drew did a wonderful job portraying Amy and Alyssa played Alyssa before the cameras but they called her "Amy Fisher."

As an adult, Alyssa got by on her boobs.  That's all she had to offer.  She never took to the time to study acting and she still gives the sort of 'performance' you'd expect from a child actress.  She can recite lines very well, she just can't create a character.

She's latched on to #MeToo -- though she didn't create it.  Rose McGowen has rightly called her out as fake ass.  We have called her that too.  Yes, Ileana Douglas is a friend of mine and, yes, Martin Scorsese had told me years ago about what Leslie Moonves did to Ileana.  So, yes, I had a reason to defend her (and I noted all of that when I noted it here).  What's Alyssa's reason for not standing with Ileana?  Oh, that's right, she wanted Leslie to greenlight a TV show for her.

The whore stayed silent -- while preening and posing as brave and pretending to lead on MeToo -- because she wanted a TV show.

So the whore needs to shut up.  She won't though.

She has no career and that's all the more pathetic when you grasp that she's married to a William Morris agent who uses the agency to get her jobs.  So these pathetic jobs she's had in the last few years?  From using the agency.  Clients who aren't working and aren't married to a William Morris agent should register that she's getting jobs while they aren't.

She can't act.  She thinks doing what she did as a child qualifies as acting.  She's a stupid hick who's gotten by on her breasts back when she was young and now depends on hubby to get her jobs.

She can't act.

She's tried to play 'activist.'

One of those attempts include her pushing "PatriotNotPartisan" and she hectors Republicans whom she finds lacking.

But if she truly believed in patriotism over party, she wouldn't reTweet crap like this.

  Retweeted

Dear sane people :

Any time the name Hunter Biden crosses a person’s lips, please inform them of this.
This Tweet is unavailable.









Here's the Tweet part that's unavailable now.


  Retweeted

Dear sane people :



Any time the name Hunter Biden crosses a person’s lips, please inform them of this.





Wally and Cedric called it out last night:








  • They note how you don't reTweet Neera if you're a feminist.  They note Neera is a two-bit bitch who outed a woman who was being sexually harassed at work (Neera was the one who should have stopped the harassment, not covered it up, not outed the female who came forward), they noted that Neera, as revealed in her own e-mails, knew that Hillary shouldn't have used a private e-mail and what a scandal that was, they noted Neera herself has assaulted an employee and so much more.

    A polite society doesn't reTweet Neera.  And no feminist should ever do it.

    But here's the point I'm making, Alyssa, don't say you put country above party when you reTweet that crap.

    Hunter Biden is the portrait of corruption.  That doesn't mean Trumps can't be as well.  But on the left, we police our own or we are nothing but partisans.

    I know this is hard for you because you're not just a hack, you're also an uneducated hick.  You never went to a real school, you never went to college, you're just a really dumb person who spits out what people tell you.  You lack the energy to educate yourself, you lack the skill to analyze.  It's why you're so tired and pointless as an actress.  It's why your idea of being 'political' is a bigger joke than you are.

    Take your botched plastic surgery and your Democratic Party talking points that you try to pass off as insight and just sit down.  Don't stand up again until your lazy ass has gone to college.  And forget anyone voting you into public office.  You're an uneducated idiot.  No one in California will want you to represent them and I will back your opponent in the primary and get everyone I know to back them as well.

    You are a menace to the public square.  You try to use your fleeting fame to promote the ideas of party hacks, you offer nothing original, you only repeat and steal.

    I don't have time for you and, frankly, the country doesn't either.

    Let me note thanks to ____ for typing this dictation.

    I am literally spitting blood.  I had a tooth crack last night and had to have surgery and, apparently due to the diabetes, the bleeding hasn't stopped yet.

    But I am taking the time to call out Alyssa because she is a danger to the public square.  She has an audience of desperate shut-ins. 

    Alyssa's nonsense gives the appearance of celebrity but she's a faded actress who couldn't make it in the real world of adult acting.  She was miserable on MELROSE PLACE because the stars of that show didn't like her (nor did the fans).  She went to CHARMED and promptly began causing problems.  She was a producer for the last half of the show's run -- a producer of a show set in San Francisco.  So why didn't 'woke' Alyssa ever insist upon a gay or lesbian character?  There were none -- apparently Phoebe lived in a special part of San Francisco inhabited by straights only.  In addition, all the African-American characters (really just two) were created before Alyssa was a producer.  "Woke," my ass.  When people note her cultural appropriation these days or her racist portrayals of Native Americans, they should grasp her history.   CHARMED ended 13 years ago.  Her 'acting' since?  Everyone hated her on the set of MY NAME IS EARL.  Her sitcom ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED resulted in the suit that championed the show getting fired and was so bad that ABC only aired four of the six filmed episodes and issued an edict that Alyssa wasn't to be cast in any ABC sitcoms.  On MISTRESSES, she tried to pull the crap she pulled on CHARMED and get people fired but ABC backed KJ Steinberg and Tina Mimoun and told Alyssa she could leave.  (Which Alyssa then pretended was her decision and was a result of the series moving to Canada.  Did no one notice that "I can't leave my children" Alyssa now films in Georgia?)  She was a witch on that set and all the actresses were thrilled when Alyssa was let go.  Her current show?  The actual stars of INSATIABLE are pretty damn tired of Alyssa billing herself as a star of the show.  Not only is it a show about a teenage girl, but adult Alyssa isn't even in every episode.  She is not a star of the show.

    Alyssa and her shut-ins need to grasp that Alyssa's career ended some time ago and that's there's something deeply disturbing about a 46-year-old woman who delivers the same performance -- over and over -- that she did as a child.

    Joe Biden?




    From yesterday, that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "First Family Material?" about Hunter Biden.

    As Kate Aronoff has noted, "We need to talk about Hunter Biden."  From her column at THE GUARDIAN:



    The standard lines from Democrats about Hunter Biden and his business dealings in China and Ukraine have been consistent: Donald Trump has abused the office of the president by asking foreign leaders to investigate Biden’s son, and there is absolutely no proof that either Joe or Hunter Biden have done anything to break the law. Any questionable dealings by Biden’s son also pale in comparison to ethical breaches on the part of Ivanka, Eric or Donald Trump Jr, who have routinely blurred the lines between the extended Trump Organization – the family’s business empire –and their presence in the White House.
    This is all true, and arguably these are the right lines vis-a-vis the long overdue impeachment proceedings. What’s harder to shake is the fact that Hunter Biden’s career is undeniably shady in the way that only the son of a longtime Washington insider could muster, failing upwards into positions of influence and power on the merits of his last name. And that should be considered a huge liability to Joe Biden, for months now considered heir apparent for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.

    It's interesting when educated women speak and write -- Sarah Chayes, Kate Aronoff.  They're not screaming, "Say Trump! Say Trump!" No, educated women -- pay attention, Alyssa -- realize this is a real issue and that is needs to be discussed.

    If you believe that Donald Trump and his family have done corrupt things since he became president, great, call him out on it.  But grasp, it's going to be hard to call him out in a general debate -- to call him out on corruption -- if Joe Biden is the nominee.  That's why you need a strong nominee -- and, yes, strength does include (and always has) integrity.

    Sing it, Aretha.







    Behold the $50k/month international business genius:

    Hunter...asked a homeless man in Pershing Square where he could buy crack. Hunter said that the man took him to a nearby homeless encampment...He returned to buy more crack a few times that week.”









    Integrity.  Not to be found in Hunter Biden.


    Replying to 

    Hunter Biden at least served in the military the great kids of Don have no experience, don’t know how the government operates and no degree related to government or defense.  Throwing stones at glass houses can be quite dangerous.






    Poor, dumb Debbie.

    Beau Biden served in the military.  Hunter?  He was in the Reserves, yes, but they kicked him out for cocaine use.



    Joe Biden's Son Hunter Kicked Out of Navy for Cocaine via








    So that's really not a plus or something to brag about on the resume.

    Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders had a heart attack.  He continues to seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.   Bernie's speechwriter Tweeted:



    A class act.







    And Bernie himself has Tweeted today:



    When we win the Democratic nomination and defeat Donald Trump, we will transform our political system by rejecting the influence of big corporate money.





    Money is not speech.

    Corporations are not people.

    And you shouldn't have to beg the rich and powerful for money to run for office.

    Today we are releasing our plan to get corporate money out of politics.





    Passing Medicare for All and eliminating all past-due medical debt is not only our moral obligation. It is economically necessary.






    Trump's vision of government is one that serves the rich and attacks the poor. We have a different idea. We are going to protect the programs that are life-and-death for millions of working people and make the wealthy pay their fair share.








    Deeply stupid, so many of Joe's supporters are deeply stupid.  And if you want four more years of Donald Trump, you hug on Joe tightly -- all the way down to the bottom because that ship will likely sink and give Trump four more years.  Bernie would be an excellent nominee, Elizabeth Warren and Beto O'Rourke are two other strong nominees.  Those three -- and others -- can stand on a stage and call Donald corrupt without looking like a hypocrite.

    Joe is not the choice we need.

    Gore Vidal used to talk about how then-Jackie Kennedy marveled over all the opposition research that was done against Nixon for the 1960 presidential race and how most of it was never used.  In terms of today, you can't use opposition research on Donald Trump and corruption if Joe Biden is your nominee -- the actions of Joe's brother James and his son Hunter have ensured that.  Also in terms of today, Carly Simon's second memoir is TOUCHED BY THE SUN: MY FRIENDSHIP WITH JACKIE.  ("Touched By The Sun" is the song she wrote for Jacqueline Onassis).  The book will be released October 22nd.








  • Dotting the i’s on another project. A book about my relationship with a most extraordinary and fascinating beautiful woman who I am proud was my friend.

    Jackie Kennedy was special to me and while writing about our…





    Sweepstakes #4 is here! Preorder Carly's upcoming book Touched by the Sun and enter for a chance to win The Carly Simon Memoir Collection. All you have to do is upload your receipt at the link below. Best of luck! -





    Listen to Sally's new podcast "The Kaleidoscope" where she interviews me, Ben, my grandson Bodhi and his dad Dean. I couldn't be more proud.













    Here come the priests, each one wailing and bemoaning
    Lordy, they got their heads bowed down
    Here come the madmen, they're too excited for atoning:
    "Burn the mosque, " they're shouting, "Burn it down!"
    Save me a place, surround me with friendly faces
    All of us have gathered here to share the end
    To watch the world go up in flames
    Please, Lord we're not ready
    Give us a day
    Give us an hour
    Here come the kings, Let's dispense with their apologizing
    Just bring on the acrobats and clowns
    Here comes the rumble, Hang on for universal dying
    Please ignore the baying of the hounds
    -- "Share The End," written by Carly Simon and Jacob Brackman, first appears on her ANTICIPATION album






    Welcome to 🇮🇶

    The country that uses rocket launchers on unarmed protesters







    In Iraq, the protesters are under attack from their own government which has ordered the security forces to respond to protests by firing 'live ammunition' at them.

    Over the weekend, Alissa J. Rubin (NEW YORK TIMES) reported:


    When peaceful protesters poured into the Iraqi streets this past week, demanding an end to widespread government corruption, unemployment and a lack of basic services, the government was caught off guard.
    The Iraqi leadership shut down the internet, imposed a curfew, deployed security forces and was largely unapologetic when they opened fire on demonstrators.


    Over the past week, the police killed at least 91 people, and had wounded more than 2,000 as of Saturday.

    On Sunday,   Bobby Allyn (NPR) counted 104 dead and 6,107 injured while noting:


    Demanding better basic public services like electricity and water and renouncing corruption, a small group of protesters assembled seemingly spontaneously last week before being dispersed by security forces.

    Then the protesters put out a call to re-converge on social media and the response took observers and government officials aback: Thousands of mostly young adults in their 20s, outraged over inadequate services and poor job prospects in the oil-rich country, came out to push for more opportunity and an end to corruption. 
    The Iraqi army and police have responded by firing live rounds, tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. As protests spread to other parts of the country, the bloody clashes continued. 


    And John Davison and Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) reported:


    Today, Davison and Rasheed note that, overnight in Sadr City,  15 more people died.

    Joe Biden needs to speak to this.  As he endlessly brags, Barack put him in charge of Iraq.  Forget his Iraq War vote for a moment, his cheerleading of that war, his egging it on, in November 2008, Barack informed Joe that, come January 2009, he would be in charge of Iraq and Joe was in charge for both terms.  He needs to speak.  He can't stop claiming that credit in one debate after another.  You want to claim the credit, than speak to the reality of Iraq right now, two years after you are no longer in charge.

    Donald Trump needs to be speaking as well.  We all know he loves to Tweet.  So where's the Tweet about this.  And, on Iraq, I'm not here to promote somebody's book (other than Carly's book, she's a friend) but a new book is out claiming Donald thinks the answer to immigration is a moat -- and a moat filled with alligators.

    That has to be the dumbest idea for the US of the year.  Some may remember former prime minister of Iraq and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki proposed a moat to save Baghdad -- well, to save the Green Zone.  That was an insane idea as well.

    Hopefully, this idiotic idea was shot down the minute Donald proposed it.  If for no other reason than self-interest, it should have been shot down.  If basic humanity flew out the window, liability would still apply -- meaning do you want to deal with the legal bills of the immigrant trying to enter the country who is wounded -- but not killed -- by an alligator?  Even had the administration dismissed with humanity and common sense, I doubt any court that dealt with this would toss humanity and common sense out the window.

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