Liars and Saints

  The astonishing series, "The Curse"--which is like a horror-film version of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"--has to do with bodies. It's partly about how embarrassing our bodies are. In one scene, a producer of reality TV needs a certain subject to weep on camera. She won't comply--she isn't feeling joyful, and in fact she is dying of cancer. But the producer assaults her with a pipet of fake tears, then tries to rub a potion on her cheeks, "for redness." Later, shockingly, a father-in-law speaks to his "mentee" about the phenomenon of the small penis. "There are beefsteak tomatoes, and there are cherry tomatoes--but once you stick them in a sandwich, they all taste the same...." Some of the grossest jokes concern skin. A popular show--in the fictional world of "The Curse"--has a masked lover dating various interested women. No one knows what the masked man looks like. It's only on a climactic wedding night that the m...

 Emma Stone is pregnant, and I'm delighted for her, and I just want to celebrate Ms. Stone in a few paragraphs. SNL almost cut the skit "The Actress" -- surely, the greatest moment among all the great SNL moments -- and it's Emma Stone who insisted that "The Actress" actually happen. Emma Stone is the main watchable feature in "Crazy, Stupid, Love," and if you go through the reviews, you'll see more than one critic saying, "Despite my reservations, I enjoyed the movie because of Emma Stone....." Emma Stone is using her post-Oscar-win capital to remake Glenn Close's "101 Dalmatians" -- and even though I haven't seen the new movie, just thinking about it makes me smile. And I admire Stone's decision-making; surely, "Cruella" is a movie that *needs* to happen. Finally: Maybe my favorite moment in Hollywood history (as of now)....is the set-up for "Easy A." Ms. Stone lies about her weekend to make...

A young actress tires of playing "vacant, one-dimensional characters." She longs for a juicier role. And that role finds her. She will be "the wife who gets cheated on" in a brief bit of gay porn. The actress longs for transcendence. How can she "find" this character--and convey something profound about the human condition? She sifts through her props--"clues, pieces to the puzzle that is Deirdre." An Ugg boot. Some batteries. "2017" novelty glasses. Bereft, she worries she won't be able to reach some kind of emotional epiphany. She must arrive for her big moment: discovering her husband "in the act." Discovering her husband mid-coitus with her godson. And--suddenly--genius arrives. The actress understands what Deirdre--great-souled Deirdre--would say in this moment. Tearfully, Deirdre says, "I forgive you." Half the world loves this clip. I think that's mainly for the performance of Emma Stone. How m...

How should a viewer think about "The Favourite"? - With reference to recent politics. I thought about Steve Bannon grooming Donald Trump, and about Dick Cheney commanding Dubyah, as in a puppet-show. Brilliant Sarah does not have Anne's power, but--through wit, through scrappiness--she acquires her own kind of throne. A shadow-throne. Sarah, like Dick, like Steve, makes sure that the Sovereign follows a certain To-Do list. (And Sarah, like Steve Bannon, like Thomas Cromwell, ultimately falls. The story of Icarus. You get too close to the sun, and bad things happen.) - With reference to feminism. This is a movie in which three women hold court. They discuss things that are not men. (It's absurd to position Anne as the protagonist. The main character is clearly Emma Stone's Abigail--but no one ever said award campaigns make sense.) One thing I admire about this movie is its candid acknowledgement of the brutality in women's lives. There's no soft-focus o...