Oh, Diddy!  Diddy do it?  Done Diddy did.

I should clarify that any glee I may be experiencing from this is not necessarily schadenfreude.  Not entirely.  There's also a sense of redemption for myself, long a victim of baseless aspersions over what some people chose to perceive as my irrational disrespect for this formerly known as Titan of the Black Music Industry.  I've always been intuitively suspicious of famous and powerful people in entertainment who have an empirical lack of talent.  The industry happens to be full of talentless pigs whose sole skill set appears to be the ability to align themselves within the industry in gatekeeper positions in order to (resentfully) arbitrate the fates of actual talented people.  Call it the Simon Cowell Strategy for Success.  Pee Dunk, famous for claiming that he "don't write beats, I write checks", has been conspicuously talentless for far too long for anyone to pretend that he deserves any form of accolades for anything other than crude hustle.  And so, we find out how crude he really is.

Anyone paying attention over the years shouldn't be surprised.  Didds has been regularly accused by various women for sexual impropriety, including rape both chemically and physically administered.  He also has a pretty well known reputation for a violent temper, extreme jealousy and maybe possibly setting up Biggie's death to look like it was Tupac's fault.  He's always been a shady bitch, everyone seems to understand this, and yet everyone has had this tendency to look the other way and allow Piddy to cosplay as a community inspiration and philanthropist because....I'm gonna guess they're scared.

Or, if we're talking about the scions of the entertainment industry, perhaps they're compromised as well.  Because these Diddy Parties are also somewhat notorious affairs, going well back to the 90s when they were attended by the likes of little Leo DiCaprio and Usher and all of the young models that were magnetically attached to their tails.  But it's all good fun though.  The best parties always require an NDA anyway.  And the rest of the peasantry gets to sit outside the gates and wonder about all of that loathsome, delicious debauchery inside.

Also to be clear - I have no problems with the concept of the "Freak-Off" party.  I think it's absolutely delightful for rich, beautiful people to stain the poshest penthouses with Valdez-levels of lube while under the influence of the finest cocaine and ketamine LA has to offer.  I think that this is in fact an excellent use of disposable generational wealth.  Just tip the maids generously, it's all good.

So what's the problem?  Maybe, filming the orgies without anyone's consent?  That's a little fucked up.  Luring women (not prostitutes) to engage in these proceedings under false pretenses and then using the drugs to try to smoove it over and get everyone "agreeable" (without mentioning the cameras)?  Not classy.  The indictment unsealed yesterday explicitly states that the videos and images of these sex parties were used by Diddy as "collateral".  Downright fiendish.  Although it is interesting that "extortion" wasn't one of the charges, but maybe they're saving that card for "the river".  "Kidnapping", however, was one of the charges, which strongly suggests that at least some of the participants were not allowed to leave or say "no".  And several of the women (out of the 50 listed as accusers) claimed to have suffered weeks-long injuries as a result of the sexual activity.  (No word yet on possible STD infections.)  Also, a minor detail, several of the girls involved were underage.

Maybe some of the boys as well?




According to these and many of the other surfaced allegations of late, there's a consistent theme of Diddy's inclination for bi-sexuality, including many accusations from men - employees, producers and musicians - saying that Diddy also sexually assaulted, drugged and raped them as well.  Let's posit that the point of this "collateral" was control, in classic organized crime fashion, then in the hypermachismo world of hip-hop, and hip-hop inspired R&B, having evidence of such hypermasculine studs engaged in homosexual acts would prove to be very valuable.  There's strong evidence that women were not the sole victims of Diddy's schemes.

Justin Bieber, who was discovered, sponsored and introduced to Diddy by Freak-Off veteran Usher, has attended these parties, when he was underage.  The above video shows Bieber's initiative "48 hours", where as Diddy says "what we're doing we can't really disclose" (the look on Bieber's face here is preciously concerned).  "Definitely a 15-year-old's dream" which pardon me if I suggest from my own 15-year-old experience sounds sexual in nature.  "I've been given custody of him" which is a truly WTF!/Get Out Of There! level of alarming vocabulary choice.  But what kind of "custody" are we talking about?  Clearly he must be just joshing around, right?  Well, Diddy goes on to clarify as a relevant example that he also had "legal guardianship" of Usher when he produced his first album (when Usher was 16).  And finally, what exactly are you gong to do with that sweet child, Diddy?  "We gonna go full, buckful-crazy".  Says the 40 year old man with a 15 year old.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Jinn?  Why you gotta be so cynical?  Maybe this is like a Make-a-Wish thing.  It doesn't have to be full Michael Jackson."  You're right, it doesn't have to be.  But, um, knowning what we know....
 

Rock wrote:

Obviously there are worse things here, but I found the IVs to be a pretty hideous detail.

If you're going to force people to fuck for days on drugs, the least you can do is offer some hydration.

Ice water is for closers.

Gotta admit.  I can't say I'm super excited for this new SNL movie.

There's a lot of issues.  First of all, Jason Reitman is not an impressive writer or director, despite being greatly advantaged by nepotism and a handful of star roles in otherwise weak Oscar seasons.  (Up in the Air, if you couldn't figure it out.)  Less impressive than that is Reitman's recent co-writer on the latest underwhelming Ghostbusters movies.  This is the central creative force behind the film.

As we saw with the National Lampoon film, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, any fun gained from watching younger comedians do cosplay of older, more talented and legendary comedians, is of extremely limited value.

As this film is so well-timed as to coincide with the beginning of the show's 50th anniversery (although only the 49th anniversery of its premiere), the entire enterprise is calculated to squeeze the most self-congratulatory currency out of the institution's remaining stalwarts.  Like Lorne Michaels himself, even giving himself the vanity casting of an actor a decade younger than he was at the time in order to artificially amplify his notoriety as a precociously prescient child-king.  The whole venture has an unwholesome odor of self-service.

You may have heard, but there's already some uproar by the fact that the film portrays Jim Henson as an "out-of-touch square", leading some fans to point out that Henson's legacy has managed to be as successful as SNL.  Without getting into such comparisons, I've always felt (no pun) that the mythical notion that Henson and his Muppets were long-standing pariahs on the show has been greatly exaggerated over the years.  There certainly were those (Mike O'Donoghue and Alan Zweibel especially) who took a snotty attitude toward Henson, but (consulting the large "oral history") it isn't at all clear how ingrained such an attitude was among the rest of the cast and writers.  At least, the Muppets seemed to have been more welcome among the women - Gilda Radner, Lily Tomlin and Candice Bergen - who appeared to take some delight in appearing with them.  It's worth noting that no one seemed to have a comparable problem with the Mr. Bill sketches when they appeared a couple of years later, although that may have been simply because no one on the writing staff was required to write for them, instead giving creator Walter Williams his own credit.  And, btw, O'Donoghoe and Zweibel are kinda assholes anyway?

Since it's clear that the events of this film involve the first episode which I've seen many times, there's no point of spoilers in the reviews.  And what I'm reading is stupid.  Clearly there is no attempt being made to preserve the integrity of the first show, with multiple mentions to sketches and celebrities which were not there.  It seems dumb to me because I was under the impression that the whole reason for why one would want to do something like reconstruct the run-up to the very first episode is that the very first episode is kinda legendary in its own right.  Like it shouldn't really involve a lot of embellishment.  Now, I will concede, that due to the embryonic nature of the form of the show at the time, there wasn't quite as much sketch comedy on that first show as some fans would expect.  In fact, for the first two shows, there was either as much or more musical performances as comedy.  The first show had two musical guests with two numbers apiece. four George Carlin segments, five pre-taped commercial parodies, the Albert Brooks film (oddly, Brooks is not listed as appearing in the new film), the Andy Kaufman Mighty Mouse skit, the Henson 'Land of Gorsh', a Valeri Bromfield set (Bill Crystal, who is shown in the new film, would walk off set before the live broadcast), an original SNL film "Show Us Your Guns", and Weekend Update.  Aside from that, only four live sketches were performed with the Not Ready/Prime Time cast - Bee Hospital, Victims of Shark Bites, Trojan Horse Security and a very brief trial sketch.

That may sound to be a bit too thin material to base a feature film on, but it's, as Albert Brooks would say, the impossible truth of the matter.  That's the history.  I'm sure there will be lots of talk about "spiritual truths" and whatnot, but this is the state of the show at its inception.  And if it's not good enough for a recreation, well, maybe there's no reason to do one.  After all, we all have the DVDs anyway, and such karaoke-style imitations will only go so far in the long run.
 

There will no doubt be a deeper discussion about Megalopolis and its use of allusions to 'cancel culture' as a thematic device.  It isn't difficult to see an immediate knee-jerk reaction which would amount to accusing Coppola and the film of complaining about accountability, similar to how people like Dave Chappelle and John Cleese have been accused, although they've offered a more nuanced critique of the culture than they've been allowed credit.  It's a strawman binary to say that anyone who takes issue with the sometimes uncritical tendency of cancellation as being equivalent of supporting or condoning abusers, but this has unfortunately been the case.  Some on the side of vigilantly enforcing such cancellations have even claimed in some cases that even the act of bothering to learn the facts of the accusation is borderline treasonous to the cause, as seen with the vitriol expressed by those upset that anyone was actually watching the Heard-Depp trial, for example.  "Should we even be talking about this?"  I saw recently where Jezebel is saying that no one should have a right to read about the details of the Nuzzi/Kennedy affair, lest one female reporter be uncomfortably embarrassed.  But despite all of these things, even if we can reasonably assert that accusations should be taken seriously, and seriously investigated, that it also happens to be a fact that there have been a larger than zero number of accusations which have led to material cancellations and which have been proven untrue.  And wokeness requires justice for all parties.  It is incumbant to treat these stories with care and clarity, and more knowledge is better than less, and context does not equal complicity.

Megalopolis is perhaps less problematic by the fact that Caesar's accusations are roundly and safely determined to be unfounded without too many complications or distractions from the plot.  Arguably, they are not even really substantial plot points on their own, except as examples of connivance from his enemies.  But considering how Coppola has frontloaded expectations by explaining how he purposefully employed certain actors - Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman - who have dealt with either certain accusations or espoused unpopular politics in recent years (and it's interesting how all of their characters are the ones weaponizing accusations against Caesar in the film), it seems inevitable that some viewers will choose the simplest math to deduce something more reactionary about Coppola's attitudes about cancel culture generally.

But more interesting is the question of how cancel culture has proven particularly hostile to the notion of "genius", which is, I believe, what Coppola's true intent to examine.  There are certain dogmas (again, it's easy to cite Hannah Gadsby here) which hold that there exists some kind of privilege or acceptance for those with genius to engage in abuse.  And to be frank, it certainly isn't difficult to cite a number of proclaimed geniuses through history who have been abusers.  But the parallel is also true, as it is just as easy to cite geniuses who were not abusive, and it is just as easy to cite non-geniuses were were abusers.  Despite their personal pretensions, no one has ever seriously considered Harvey Weinstein or Puff Daddy as artistic geniuses.  Or Roger Ailes and Les Moonves, Matt Lauer and Bill O'Reilly.  Or Jeffery Epstein and Donald Trump.  Or Catholic priests and gym coaches.  So why have artists, and geniuses specifically, been singled out as paragons of abuse, who have been resentfully disparaged to the point that some have even portrayed the concept of genius as a collective con, a ruse whose function is solely to act as an excuse to permit selfishness and wanton appetite and abuse?  Why not a Gadsby-type who attended law school instead of art school, broadly condemning the permissive corruption endemic in the culture of lawyers?

Just as Dave Chappelle felt the need to defend capital-C Comedy for what he's called the "alchemy", which transmutes pain into laughter, against Gadsby's indictment of comedy as an inadequete medium to properly address pain and trauma, Coppola feels the need to defend capital-G Genius against similar indictments, which have proliferated in these recent years of "reckoning", that it is more of a guise for abusers to excuse themselves for their selfish exceptionalism.  Capital-G Genius is currently ridiculed by the same people who ridicule capital-A Art, who deny the spiritual elations inherent in emotional grace.  Inspiration is an intangible substance which cannot be bought or sold, and in an increasingly materialistic culture, intangibles which cannot be bought or sold provoke distrust, ridicule and resentment.  I think it's clear that Coppola's "megalon" is a crude embodiment of inspiration, imagination and creativity at its most intangible, ethereal, esoteric.  Megalon is the enemy of those who only trade in IP and AI "property", content not quality, and who can only distrust what they can't own lest anyone start to question the value of possession.
 

So you mean the place where FilmBuff is spamming threads with links to Megapolis articles in order to prove its greatness, and Siddon is ranting about how it is so uncontestably bad and incomprehensible that it was probably conceived as a way to avoid inheritance tax, and Keyser is being a brat because absolutely no one is listening to anything he is saying....you mean that isn't where you can find all of the best reviews.

 

Oof.  Looking at these critic and audience reactions to this new Joker sequel, and I have to wonder whether this new film is really that much worse than the original or if maybe the joke has simply worn off.  Maybe the time between 2019 and today - the pandemic, Jan. 6 and an increased sense of social violence and dissolution - has undermined the hipster fetish of "ironically" celebrating sociopathy.

I might sound like a mere contrarian here.  Since I had very little interest in seeing this new Joker film anytime soon, if ever, I wasn't too particularly concerned with any spoiler content, and there was this interesting article over at Hollywood Reporter which attempts to go under the surface over why the new film is being received as a "betrayal" by fans of the original film, and by fans of the character overall.  I thought this was an interesting question.  But as noted, the article is full of spoilers if you want to read it yourself, and I'll avoid them here.

The sequel hasn’t just been met with disappointment, but also a sense of betrayal from some fans of the first....

I do think that there were a not insignificant number of people, from every walk of life, who saw Arthur Fleck as a heroic figure, one who took the wealthy and the broken welfare and social services systems to task.

The film has a genuine interest in parasocial relationships and people who insert themselves into true crime narratives as a way to be seen or feel some kind of meaning.

What fascinates me in terms of these two Joker films is the willingness of certain audiences to immerse themselves in Arthur Fleck’s story, only when they thought he was the iconic Batman villain....I have to admit, I do find it funny that for seemingly a lot of people, it wasn’t this character study of Arthur Fleck they were interested in, but how he becomes the villain so adored.

Could it be that this sequel has been so demeaned by critics and audiences alike precisely because it subverts the idea of the first film's appearance of celebrating sociopathy?  Or even better perhaps turns the mirror on the fans' own safely vicarious thrill of sociopathy?

Hm.  Maybe I'll have to see this thing after all.  (Not paying for it either way.)  Could it even be possible that this sequel might redeem the original in context? 

Maybe it’s not the punchline we deserve. But in terms of a filmmaker who tried to stray from the comics, only to wind up indebted to them, and a portion of the audience very invested in comic book accuracy and forming connections to characters who fit within the conditions of the IP they seek to have some control over, Joker: Folie a Deux dances through a messy delivery to land on a pretty killer joke.

Well well well.  Look at this headline: Nicole Kidman Wants Scorsese to Do a 'Film With Women'

But it turns out Kidman is less suffragette than selfish, because her real motive is to get to star in a Scorsese movie.  The actual quote from her Vanity Fair interview goes: "I’ve always said I want to work with Scorsese, if he does a film with women."  "IF"!

Shall we look at some women who have done film with Scorsese?

Ellen Burstyn: Best Actress winner - Oscar; BAFTA; Golden Globe and New York Film Critics nominee
Diane Ladd - Best Supporting Actress nominee  - Oscar, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, winner of BAFTA
Jodie Foster: Best Supporting Actress nominee; winner for BAFTA, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics
Liza Minnelli: Best Actress Golden Globe nominee
Cathy Moriarty: Best Supporting Actress nominee
Sandra Bernhard: Best Supporting Actress - National Society of Film Critics
Rosanna Arquette: Best Female Lead - Independent Spirit Awards
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio: Best Actress nominee, both Oscar and Golden Globe
Barbara Hershey: Best Supporting Actress nominee - Golden Globe
Lorraine Bracco - Best Supporting Actress nominee, both Oscar and Golden Globe; winner for both LA and Chicago Film Critics
Juliette Lewis: Best Supporting Actress, both Oscar and Golden Globe
Michelle Pfeiffer: Best Actress nominee - Golden Globe; winner of Elvira Notari Prize at Venice
Winona Ryder: Best Supporting Actress nominee - Oscar and BAFTA, winner for Golden Globe and National Board of Review Awards
Miriam Margolyes: Best Supporting Actress - BAFTA
Sharon Stone: Best Actress nominee - Oscar and Chicago Film Crics; winner of Golden Globe
Cameron Diaz: Best Supporting Actress - Golden Globe
Cate Blanchett: Best Supporting Actress winner - Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild; nominee for Golden Globe
Lily Gladstone - Best Actress nominee - Oscar, Chicago Film Critics, London Film Critics, Paris Film Critics, National Society of Film Critics; winner of Screen Actors Guild, National Board of Review, Golden Globe, etc.

When can we put this canard to rest?  Has anyone ever been successful at negging their way into a vanity project with an acclaimed director?

Look at these balls here:

Kidman said she wanted to do a movie of his that has “women,” not “woman,” and, despite being the person who directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, he just hasn’t written anything fit for the actress throughout the majority of her career.

"Fit for the actress", Nicole specifically, I assume.  Oh, she'd love to work with Scorsese, if he ever had anything good enough for her.  (Scorsese also isn't technically a "writer", but whatever.)  And as for the dig at having a plurality of women, didn't I just point out that three women won accolades for Age of Innocence alone?  Wasn't that film made during "the majority" of Kidman's career?  Was she not fit for roles like Patricia Arquette in Bringing Out The Dead, or Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, or Vera Farmiga in Departed or either Michelle Williams or Patricia Clarkson in Shudder Island?  I do agree that Nicole Kidman would make for a poor Osage, but, again with the "women" dig, that film also had some really powerful roles by actresses like Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers and JaNae Collins, as Molly's mother and sisters, even though they didn't receive as much attention as Lily Gladstone.

But, hey!  Nicole?  Good luck.  You gonna be ok.


 

I recently reviewed the film, The Hunt, which was obviously made and sold as some kind of political grenade.  It was as dumb and exploitative as one might expect.

Imagine my concern then when I read this bullshit from an AV/Club analysis: "crazed progressives get to live out the popular liberal dream of hunting Trump supporters for sport".

Wait, wait.  What?  Who?  Who are these fucks?  When did this happen?  Where did we vote on this?  Show me the poll numbers.  Is this some private desire for these elitist media bloggers that the rest of us were never invited to consent to?  Do they even understand what the "liberal" stance on something like collective punishment looks like?  Do they even understand words at all?

Thankfully, this writer does, at least, recognize the toxicity of both the film and the connected exploitation of partisan divisiveness in our culture, but they also fail in the most important regard: "making the hero a political mystery feels like a cop out".  Aw.  I guess you're just going to have to figure it out.  What an idiot.
 

Trying to distract myself from the moral morass of the news day, I come across an interview with the podcasters behind Filmspotting, and I think this little bit makes me feel almost nostalgically righteous over some other bygone days of film message boards.  I'm sure you can probably see where I'm coming from here:

Adam Kempenaar wrote:

I’m surprised still, in 2025, the number of people who think that criticism and film criticism specifically somehow is about objectivity or should reflect objectivity as opposed to recognizing how fully subjective the act of engaging in criticism is. Now, one of the things we definitely try to do every week on the show is make sure that we are backing up our points with textual evidence. You have to have a point of view and you have to make an argument. You have to be able to support your argument. You have to explain why you feel the way you do, but at the end of the day, you are articulating why you feel the way you do.

There isn’t one correct answer, to Josh’s point, and part of it is, especially as the country obviously has become even more fractured and divisive, you’ll get arguments or you’ll get comments sometimes from people who will take issue with certain political things that we might say or other critics might say. They’ll effectively give you the "stick to the film" argument like "stick to basketball", but "stick to film". "Just tell me that the cinematography is great". "Tell me that the acting’s great". That’s not what criticism is about. And it is fundamentally personal. Personal can be political; personal can be a lot of things, but you’re bringing the entire spectrum of who you are as an individual to your movie-watching. And that needs to translate to the conversation. I am surprised, I think there’s still a lot of people, maybe in some ways they’re bad actors and they’re using that to try to make other points or to try to just keep people in their place and not encourage those conversations. But I still see that sort of objectivity argument pop up here and there, and I’m surprised by it.

I'll just say....I don't hate that.