Today was a good day.
Today, I purchased five general admission floor tickets for the T Bone Burnett concert in Seattle, which will take place on Sunday, June 11.
And I listened to his new album for the third time.
And in what is promising to be a very, very good music year, it’s going to be hard to beat this brilliant piece of work.
The True False Identity is dark, dark, dark, and enthralling. The man has been through the wringer, and you can feel it in every world-weary line.
The music, featuring Jim Keltner on drums and Mark Ribot on guitar (they’ll both be in his touring band), reminds me a lot of Tom Waits’ Bone Machine. It chills. It thrills. It shakes, rattles, and rolls.
My full review is coming soon.
Oh, and I also had my very first official “author photo” session today, with photographer Fritz Liedtke. In freezing gale force winds. On the beach. Not sure what they’ll look like. But I imagine Fritz now has a whole archive of good blackmail material on me if he ever needs it.
It was nice to get out. I’ve been sitting here at the computer all day every day for a full week now working on this film book, and wow, I need a vacation.
Good thing I’ve got this T Bone music to cheer me up.
FWIW, Jena Malone was no more than 11 when she performed in a rape scene, in Anjelica Huston’s Bastard out of Carolina (1996). But I don’t recall her being nude in that one.
Of course I haven’t seen the film but this just sounds exploitative of Fanning on the part of her mother & agent just for an Oscar. I really hope I’m wrong.
But it doesn’t sound like the sort of movie I’d be interested in anyway. If I wanted to see a movie about a dysfunction Southern family, I’d rather watch Junebug again.
Besides, turning to Elvis has already been done in Lilo + Stitch.
and don’t forget, cpt. casual-t, that movie with him and jfk as senior citizens fighting a mummy.
Jeffrey, I don’t know if this is necessarily “exposing the Hollywood machine”. They didn’t embrace The Woodsman, did they? If I recall, Bastard Out of Carolina was made for cable.
Was Hilary Swank embraced in her debut?
Since this stripe of film doesn’t necessarily translate to boffo box office, it seems to me that Hollywood generally steers away from them.
I agree with Gene that the onus is on her mother and agent.
What’s disturbing is the implication that the Oscar potential would be because of 12 year-old Dakota being in an actual scene of horrific abuse. In other words, the apparent assumption is that Academy voters WANT to see that scene, and would NOT give her an Oscar without it. The acting recognition would have nothing to do with how she might portray the life of a young girl coping with that abuse, but apparently only with how she portrays a young girl being actually abused. I might see the former; I would never see the latter. Apparently Dakota’s handlers think the Academy is much less discerning. Where is the line drawn being acting and actual abuse of a 12 year-old girl? Sad, sad, sad.
Show me a culture that despises virginity and I’ll show you a culture that despises children.
I saw this story and was horrified. And the fact that there is even a debate about it is even more horrifying than the story itself.
this is heavy stuff…
and it just seems a little stomach curdling in the way that it’s not art just sick, and in the way that it won’t attract movie goers at all.
–RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
Dadheart brings up some good points. Before Lloyd Grove broke the story on July 20th, the official synopsis spoke only of an “abused girl”. It said nothing about the form that abuse would take or how graphically it would be portrayed. What sounded merely stupid and distasteful before has now developed into something horrific.
As to whether the Academy will be discerning or not… well, I have little faith in them, given their track record. It’d be a whole lot better if the principals were prosecuted and that pathetic film impounded forever… on Pluto!