Skip to main content

The inconvenient '60s: sorry guys, they happened

Judging by the trailer, the eight-part miniseries The Kennedys, which has endured nearly as much bad luck as its titular family, is even worse than you’ve heard. Which is saying a lot considering how much has already been said about the project — starring Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes as the fabled first couple in Camelot — that the History Channel, Showtime, FX and and Starz all flat-out refused to air.


[. . .]


But Katie Holmes. Poor, poor Katie Holmes. Attempting to play Jackie Kennedy was a losing battle from the start and here, Holmes is able to look elegant and poised. The problem appears to be when she opens her mouth. In some parts of the trailer, she delivers a back alley acting class rendition of Upper Class Massachusetts and in other parts, she speaks with no accent at all — relying on that lop-sided grin and constant blinking that Anne Hathaway parodied so effectively on Saturday Night Live. (Julie Miller, “Katie Holmes’ Performance Is the Biggest National Tragedy In This Kennedys Trailer,” Movieline, 2 Feb. 2011)

Anne Hathaway is a giant compared to Katie Holmes -- SHE, like Jackie, actually HAS presence -- so I can forgive her more than sneaking a laugh at Katie's expense: seems but appropriate. But the aim might be with this to make the '60s seem more like Mad Men-light, as if everything was the same but got muted after the '50s, rather than intensified, wholly changed -- finally awakened. For those of us who sense none of the charisma about Obama that others seem to, we're wondering if this is all a plot to keep him and the rest of the talented but still shortchanged (even lovely Anne Hathaway?) the absolute perfection of human kind, rather than themselves, significant slippage.

I know this is supposed to be a Republican take. I don't think that's quite right: it's just the anti-hippie take.

Link: Katie Holmes’ Performance Is the Biggest National Tragedy In This Kennedys Trailer (Movieline)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch out, liberal extremities!

Watch out, liberal extremities! websmith says: “White people and an increasing number of minorities are tired of being called racists by the true racists and more appalled that this loony bleeding has spread from the heart to the brain." This is what many progressives are going to have to get used to hearing -- that THEY are the true racists! I've said this before but '60's liberalism goes down when enough people have decided that, in sum, it was never truly about what minorities, impoverished people wanted/needed, but instead what certain AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE wanted to believe those they ostensibly spoke for wanted/needed. They (progressives) will be made to seem, not the most caring, but the most negligent, most truly self-serving. Of course, most democrats in power will not be too afflicted by this, because they're ready to turn on the ’60s too. Why? Because, sad to say, they're getting in mood to want to see the weak and needy set-up as punishment-worthy a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump...
3 comments
Read more