Tag: Amy Schumer

On the heels of the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, during which Will Smith was given the Oscar for Best Actor only minutes after he bitch-slapped presenter Chris Rock for making a fairly innocuous joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved bald head (something about how he was “looking forward to G.I. Jane 2”), we got these teary comments from the “King Richard” actor after his win:

“I got to protect Aunjanue Ellis (his co-star in “King Richard) and the 2 actresses who played Venus and Serena in “King Richard.” I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know to do what we do you gotta’ be able to talk about abuse, you gotta’ be able to have people talk crazy about you. You gotta’ be able to have people disrespect you, and you gotta’ smile and pretend like that’s okay.

He diverged at that point to tell the audience about Denzel Washington’s cautionary remark to him that, “At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.”

Will Smith seemed to be mentally teetering on the edge of a melt-down. I couldn’t help but think of his mid-life “bucket list” that had him bungee jumping off bridges, etc. He seemed to really be in precarious mental health. The network actually covered his weeping face for a few “live” moments. I had originally been glad that he was (finally) going to win, since his wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) made such a fuss about his failure to win for “Concussion” and “Happyness” and other films in the past. Apparently, whining does pay off.

Smith continued: “It’s like I want to be a vessel for love. I want to say thank you to Venus and Serena. I want to be an ambassador for love and care and concern. I want to apologize to the Academy, to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment and I’m not crying for winning an award. It’s not about winning an award for me. It’s about being able to shine a light on all of the people associated with “King Richard.”

Smith then proceeded to list all those involved with the “King Richard” project.

Will Smith

Smith concluded: “Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father (in “King Richard”) just like they said. Love will make you do crazy things.”

Yes, Will, you looked crazy. Slapping Chris Rock for doing his job and telling a very mild joke was way out of line. I hope the apology (boldfaced, above) is good enough. Better than nothing, I guess. I have watched every Academy Awards since 1955 and this was one of the things we’ll be talking about for years. What are some others? The streaker the year David Niven was handing out an award. The Sacheen LittleFeather year, when she turned down the Oscar for Brando. The Vanessa Redgrave year when she spoke up for Palestinians and was soundly denounced for “being too political.” I might add that someone said that, while David Niven defused the streaker situation with a witty remark, it took Sean “Puffy” Combs (he of the arrest with Jennifer Lopez many moons ago) to pour oil on these troubled waters, although I did think that Chris Rock held it together well. (Who would have thought that Puffy would be the calm one? Yikes!)

I hope that, in the future, audience members are made to go through metal detectors to make sure nobody is armed. I hope that Will Smith’s marriage to Jada Pinkett Smith really is sound, because there have always been rumors about an “open” marriage, (whether true or false), and your outburst at the Academy Awards didn’t help squelch any of those remarks.

I tried to summon “Coda” to watch on my Apple + TV set in the afternoon of the Oscars, when “Coda” seemed to be “peaking” in the hours before the awards. I must admit that I had not been able to see “Coda” or “Drive My Car.” There’s something about being diagnosed with cancer in the middle of the awards season that will cause you to pay more attention to surgery and doctor visits, rather than going to the movies. The two I missed were “Coda” and “Drive My Car.”

After hearing some extremely positive feedback from people whose opinions I respect, I made a valiant effort to see “Coda” in the early afternoon, but my tekkie skills were not up to the task, and so I stuck with “The Power of the Dog,” the early leader with 12 nominations. (As it turned out, it was a lot like the year “The Turning Point” didn’t win anything, despite being nominated for everything!)

As the awards wound down, my daughter and I were doing very well, with the same number of “correct” responses. We tied because I selected Kenneth Branagh for the Original Screenplay, while she took “Up in the Air.” And then we evened out again with the Adapted Screenplay, where she took “Coda” and I took “The Power of the Dog” (which was my undoing in total picks.)

Still, 16 and 17 right of those announced on the air seems pretty decent. There were very few “upsets.”

Kenneth Branagh in Chicago for “Belfast.”

The Big News of the night was the slap fest between Will Smith and Chris Rock. I couldn’t help but think of some of Ricky Gervais’ remarks when hosting shows of this kind, or of Don Rickles’ long career as an insult comic. I thought: “There’s something going on here on Will Smith’s part.” His kids seem—strange, and his marriage to Jada Pinkett Smith is…different. Her green dress was truly lovely, but there is something going on that we will all need to figure out. (And that means Will Smith, himself.)

To me, telling the public that you want to spread “love” and to “be an ambassador for love, care and concern” does not jibe with rushing to the stage and striking the comic doing his job, which was to make jokes. Chris Rock’s joke was not that harsh. So much for “being a river to my people.” [The memo apparently did not reach Chris Rock that he was “on the river” of good will for Will Smith’s people.]

I truly loved watching Amy Schumer throughout the night and highly recommend her new series “Love and Beth.” At the outset of the evening she pointed out that the movie entitled “King Richard” took years to make and focused on the FATHER of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, NOT on the talented daughters. She also was dangled above the stage in a Spiderman suit, shooting silly string, and when she came back—late in the ceremony—she asked, naively, if she had missed anything. She also sat down opposite Jesse Plemons, pulling Jesse’s wife Kirsten Dunst out of her chair, and began chatting with Jesse, who told her that the woman she had just banished from the table was not a “seat filler” but his wife.

Amy Schumer

Amy’s response, “You’re married to that seat filler? How weird.”

Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall did a credible job. and Wanda’s tour of the Hollywood Movie Museum was cute, but Amy was her comic gem self.

If you want my unvarnished opinion on which movie represented the biggest accomplishment for the director, it would probably be “Dune,” which took home 6 Oscars. Besides that film, my three “favorites” for the year were “Dune,” “West Side Story” and “No Time to Die.” I also liked “Nightmare Alley” and “Last Night in Soho” and found Bradley Cooper’s bit in “Licorice Pizza” worth the price of admission.

Will Smith’s teary acceptance speech to the audience ended this way:

“To my mother, a lot of this moment is really complicated for me (he mentioned her knitting crew, with whom she was watching)…um…being able to love and care for my mother and my family and my wife. Thank you for this honor. Thank you on behalf of Richard and thank you Academy for inviting me back.”

That last part remains to be seen.

Here were the Oscar winners:

Best Picture: “Coda”

Best Director: Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog”

Best Lead Actor: Will Smith for “King Richard”

Best Lead Actress: Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”

Best Supporting Actor: Troy Kotsur for “Coda”

Best Supporting Actress: Ariana DeBose for “West Side Story”

Best Film Editing: “Dune”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “Coda”

Best Screenplay: “Belfast”

Best Cinematography: “Dune”

Best Animated Feature: “Encanto”

Best MakeUp and Hairstyling: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”

Best Costume Design: “Cruella”

Best International Film: “Drive My Car”

Best Original Song: “No Time to Die” (Billie Eilish)

Best Documentary: “Summer of Soul”

Best Visual Effects: “Dune”

Best Production Design: “Dune”

Best Sound: “Dune”

Documentary Short Subject: “The Queen of Basketball”

Live Action Short: “The Long Goodbye”

Best Score: Hans Zimmer for “Dune”

Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” Sets Off Controversy

By Connie Wilson

On May 2, 2018

In Editorial, Humor and Weird Wilson-isms, Laughing through Life, Local, Music, Pop Culture, Reviews

OK…So, I went to see Amy Schumer’s new movie “I Feel Pretty” (and received a button that says “I Feel Pretty Awesome,” which I wore all day).I liked it—the button AND the movie.

There, I’ve said it. I liked it.

I thought it was insightful and funny and I liked lines like, “I met this baby the other day that was wack as hell.” [You can see the meeting with said baby in the clip I just posted of the movie trailer]. The trailer contains the best parts of the film, and, no, it isn’t a laugh-out-loud funny movie, because Amy is trying to make the point that (to quote a line from the movie): “This line/movie is for every girl who is ready to believe in herself.” Or, “I think a lot of people are all confused about themselves…You doubt yourself over and over. What if we didn’t care about how we looked?”

The premise is that, when Amy hits her head, she suddenly sees herself as perfect. She no longer has the crippling insecurities that beset her prior to being hit in the head. It takes another blow to her skull to turn her back into insecure Amy. One of the lines spoken to her boyfriend in the film (Ethan, well played by Rory Scovel) is: “She is awesome. She is the complete package. Your girl can handle herself in a knife fight!” Or, as Ethan says to Renee, “You know who you are and you don’t care how the world sees you.”

The movie makes a plea for “The strength and wisdom to say ‘I’m better than all that. We are real women.”

Why is she being pilloried on social media for making such undeniably positive statements? The answer seems to be that some think she is too pretty to be saying these things? Is that it? Amy is too pretty to make a statement that benefits all women everywhere? (Sheesh) Get over your bad selves, nit-pickers. And, to the newly-wed Amy: YOU GO, GIRL!

I couldn’t help but empathize with what she must be thinking and feeling as people hurl brick-bats at her for articulating the undeniable truth that most of us are insecure in some way and that it can often become almost a debilitating disease, if it inhibits us too much or prevents us from becoming our true, authentic, best selves. The film also gets the point across that TOO MUCH confidence is, well, too much.

That is probably what the uproar is all about: mid-movie Amy briefly becomes a jerk to her friends (played by Aidy Bryant of SNL as Vivian and Busy Philipps as Jane) and we want to LIKE Amy and empathize with her. If she’s confident and thinks she’s great and is enjoying herself, well, we can’t have THAT now, can we? How dare she!?

If you watch the trailer (above), you’ll see the funniest parts of the movie, complete with Amy’s attempt to win a bikini contest (she doesn’t), but, mainly, you’ll see her becoming a jerk as she gives in to her uber confident inner self, confidence which was triggered by a fall from a Soul Cycle bike that dumped her on her head. I’m thinking that her in-your-face confidence was just too much for some females to stomach. Be reassured: she doesn’t STAY a jerk.

Girls always seem to accept other girls, or women other women, only if they are sweet and malleable and supportive and “nice,” as my husband euphemistically terms it. It still isn’t acceptable in society to be sassy and funny and irreverent, if you’re female. You still get labeled as “a bitch” if you display any of those characteristics, even though Amy Schumer rose to fame because of the irreverent salacious humor of her stand-up act (and, yes, I HAVE seen her act, “live”). [It can’t be the men who are complaining and giving the film a thumbs down on YouTube, can it?]

I thought the opening sequence where she is participating in a Soul Cycle class with model-thin women and her bike seat gives away and she experiences a jarring blow to her vagina was note-perfect. She hobbles out with her pants torn and in pain. Have none of you (females) who are giving it a thumbs down on YouTube never experienced the crushing pain of falling onto the metal part of a boy’s bike? No? [Okay, then. It must be just me.]

I’ve also been involved in exercise classes where it was quite obvious I did not belong. My favorite story is the one where, somehow, I ended up LEADING the class and had NO idea where I was to “lead” them. It was a lot like the scene in “Animal House” where the marching band marches into a brick wall. I also remembered my husband once commenting that I was only equipped to compete in the Olympics in the “400 yard roll” or some such joke. (He WAS kidding, but his humor was lost on me at the time.)

I actually wrote several humorous essays about exercise classes I have known and published them in “Laughing through Life,“ so if you want to hear all about the types of things that befall Amy in her class, but happened, IRL, to me, you can order a copy on Amazon.

But that’s not the point.

The point of the movie as written and directed by Abby Kohn (“2009’s “He’s Just Not That In To You”) and Marc Silverstein (husband of *BusyPhilipps,”How To Be Single”) to me, was that Amy wants each and every one of us who is female to feel comfortable in our own skins. So what if we have too much junk in the trunk? Forgetaboutit. So what if we are not rail-thin? Move on. Get over it! Be confident.

BUT, and this is important, do NOT lose good friends because you become an insufferable ego-maniac.

Other good things about the movie:

Michael Andrews selected the music (“This Girl Is On Fire” for one) and it is great. Michelle Williams plays the daughter of a cosmetics icon who has a very soft voice like Jackie Kennedy’s (okay, you’re too young to remember how Jackie’s voice was very soft and not forceful at all, and Marilyn Monroe’s was the same way, so just work with me here) and, therefore, has a hard time being taken seriously. She also is involved in some serious sibling rivalry with her handsome brother, Grant LeClair (Tom Hopper), who comes on to Amy at one point (Amy remains true to Ethan, so why did the haters not note THAT?)

Many critics praised the appearance of Lauren Hutton as Gramma LeClaire (Lily LeClaire) in “I Feel Pretty,” who founded the cosmetics company, which is attempting to turn out an affordable cosmetics line suitable for sale in Target stores.

Lauren appears as a retired model, which she really is. She made her film debut in 1968 in “Paper Lion” and still works as a model, apparently because she is still reed-thin.

Lauren definitely has been out in the sun too much for too long and she has done nothing to diminish the age-related wrinkles caused by too much sun exposure. I actually looked up her age, after the film, since I was hoping she was older than me. She was…but not by that much.

For someone who is listed as 74 (birthday: Nov. 17, 1943) she is thin, but, aside from that, she might consider whether the path she wants to take is the one taken by Jane Fonda, or the one taken by others, which doesn’t have to mean plastic surgery, but does mean trying to diminish age-related deterioration. Yes, I know. This is in direct opposition to the message of the movie, but the message of the movie for a young woman is quite different than for a “mature” (don’t say “old”) woman: society has not moved forward enough to accept prune-like visages that could have remained recognizable if the owner of the face had taken the slightest precautions.

To me, since we are only given one face, it is irresponsible not to at least try to keep it looking halfway decent. While that also applies to our bodies, I agree with Amy that a woman in today’s society ought to NOT have to be reed-thin to be considered attractive. We women have to bear children and cook and clean and, usually, also work,and genetics will get you every time, so not all of us will remain emaciated in our golden years. Lauren is reed-thin, so she gets to keep modeling. She looks like hell, facially, but nevermind that, as long as she is thin.

That, to me, was the message for we “mature” types and, yes, that was a contradiction of the first magnitude, which I blame(d) on the age difference between the character Amy is playing (Renee Bennett) and the one that Lauren Hutton is playing (Lily LeClaire).

And probably something that the writers never considered, either, since the male writer (Marc Silverstein) is also the husband of Busy Philipps, [whois supposed to be getting a talk show this fall] and Abby Kohn might have tried for Jane Fonda for the Lauren Hutton role—or any other mature actress who has not thrown caution to the winds and abandoned her face to extensive sun damage.

Tag: Amy Schumer

2022 Oscars Feature Meltdown by Will Smith As He Wins the Oscar for Best Actor

Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” Sets Off Controversy