by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
I don’t know which is worse: That Donald Trump thinks SNL is a news channel or that he thinks FOX is a news channel.
— Red (@Redpainter1) December 17, 2018
Starting Five
1. Babes In Thailand*
*The judges feel confident that at last they nailed a headline.
The Miss Universe pageant aired from Thailand last night (It couldn’t have aired live, could it? Would it be like, what, 9 a.m. over there?) and let us tell you, you just can’t strut onto that stage with your hourglass figure any more and hope to compete.
Miss Venezuela? Law student.
Venezuela
Miss South Africa? Medical student.
Miss Vietnam? Donated all her winnings from winning the Vietnam pageant to building a library in the jungle. That is SUCH A POWER MOVE.
All three of them were in the final five, but none of them won. Miss Philippines won, although our scorecard had it South Africa, Venezuela and Canada (top 10, but eliminated after the evening gown competition). We wonder if South Africa finished 2nd because the reigning Miss U. is also from South Africa. These are the types of rulings that keep us up at night; we don’t concern ourselves with whether someone completed the process of the catch. This is more important.
2. Hostmaster General
Matt Damon hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time since 2001 this past weekend (we mistakenly thought it was his 2nd time this season, forgetting that he did not host when he played Brett Kavanaugh in an October cold open) and he rocked. It was easily the strongest episode of the season.
The cold open, “It’s A Wonderful Trump,” imagined a world in which Trump had never been elected and Damon even had a role in that (hosts rarely if ever appear in cold opens). He then put together a heartfelt monologue and tore it up in every sketch he was in, including “Westminster Daddy” and the “Weezer Argument.” He even played Will Hunting in one sketch and appeared as Tommy, the fighter husband/boyfriend to Heidi Gardner’s recurring Angel character on “Weekend Update” (“I’m taking the kids to my sister’s”).
Also, Colin Jost dared to tell the most politically incorrect joke of the season on WU. Noting that Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari had been embroiled in a controversy as to whether he is a body double of a dead version of himself, Jost said, “See? Even Africans can’t tell black people apart.”
Michael Che laughed. So did we.
3. Biden His Time
According to a poll of potential Iowa caucus-attendees (And by the way, is this any way to run the world’s most powerful country?), Joe Biden is the top Democratic nominee for 2020. Folks are already discussing a potential Biden-Beto ticket, which would be almost the exact inverse of The West Wing‘s Matt Santos-Leo McGarry ticket (that won; oops, spoiler alert).
They’re even both from Texas!
If you saw “Weekend Update” do a riff on this item, they noted that the boxed set of The West Wing would finish in the top 10 of this poll. I’d say Top 5.
4. White House Coverup
Here’s West Wing Aryan Nation sadist Stephen Miller appearing of Face The Nation yesterday morning. And here he is earlier this year…
As some tweep noted on Sunday: “He was hoping we would Nazi the difference.”
Stephen Miller missed a spot when he was creating in his new look.
Fixed it. pic.twitter.com/cqoMz713N4— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) December 16, 2018
5. Cinema Mexico
This was us 20 minutes into Roma…
So we sat down and viewed Roma over the weekend (you can see it on Netflix). If we were teaching a film class, we’d assign a 10-page paper comparing and contrasting Roma and Shoplifters. Both are foreign films centered around non-traditional family units where near the end of the film everyone goes to the beach so that we can all symbolically acknowledge where we originated from as a species. The sea is home.
Okay, so Roma. We’ve asked our resident film critic, Chris Corbellini, to review it and let’s hope he can find some time during the holiday season. For us, the overarching themes are that men are bad people and women are bad drivers. But we’ll give you one scene to illustrate what Alfonso Cuaron does in a plethora of scenes: Cleo, our knocked-up house maid protagonist, travels to a rural enclave of Mexico City to confront the deadbeat who knocked her up. As she walks from the train, some sort of political rally is taking place and in the background you see a man being shot out of a cannon into a net. The camera does not focus on him and if you only focus on Cleo you miss it.
Stuff like this happens throughout the film (the fire scene is the best; pay attention to everything happening in the background). Most of the shots are panoramic tracking shots of a main character but there is so much going on in the background, intricately staged and choreographed but made to look happenstance. This is Cuaron telling a larger story but also, let’s face it, showing off. This is why the critics are agog over this movie. Hints of Fellini.
We found the story rather languorously told and, well, meh. But you can appreciate the artistry of it all. SPOILER ALERT: We mean, the final scene of the film is of our beloved Cleo doing something so incredibly, well, domestic. As a jumbo jet flies overhead (how did Cuaron cue up the planes to fly overhead at just the right times???). That’s the big finish.
It’s no Spider-Man Into The Spider Verse.
Note: The woman who plays Cleo is a pre-school teacher. She had never acted before. She’s magnificent in the role. How difficult is this acting thing, anyway?
Music 101
Crooked Teeth
Ben Gibbard, lead vocalist and spiritual center of Death Cab For Cutie, wrote this 2006 song as his quasi-ode to short story master Raymond Carver.
Remote Patrol
8 p.m. TCM
Lady On A Train
There’s this woman, see? And she’s on a choo choo. What’s not to love?