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Post by geode on May 2, 2019 13:26:20 GMT
...speaks out on various subjects including Oprah. "Critic John Simon wrote of the actress's debut performance in 1969's A Walk With Love and Death, directed by her father, John Huston: "There is a perfectly blank, supremely inept performance by Huston's daughter Anjelica, who has the face of an exhausted gnu, the voice of an unstrung tennis racket, and a figure of no discernible shape." (A gnu, in case you're wondering, is a type of antelope.)" I was 18 when the movie came out and I found her rather fetching. link
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Post by politicidal on May 2, 2019 18:27:33 GMT
Hell she was fetching all the way up from Swashbuckler to I'd say about the second Addams Family movie. Maybe Daddy Day Care.
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Post by hi224 on May 4, 2019 22:59:56 GMT
Sounds like Oprah and Murray are asses.
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Post by politicidal on May 4, 2019 23:05:33 GMT
Sounds like Oprah and Murray are asses. Well he did insult Lucy Liu behind the scenes of Charlie's Angels. That's why he's not in Full Throttle.
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Post by hi224 on May 4, 2019 23:09:26 GMT
Sounds like Oprah and Murray are asses. Well he did insult Lucy Liu behind the scenes of Charlie's Angels. That's why he's not in Full Throttle. Ryan O Neal I'm not surprised by however.
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on May 7, 2019 5:56:13 GMT
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Post by dirtypillows on May 7, 2019 7:29:41 GMT
...speaks out on various subjects including Oprah. "Critic John Simon wrote of the actress's debut performance in 1969's A Walk With Love and Death, directed by her father, John Huston: "There is a perfectly blank, supremely inept performance by Huston's daughter Anjelica, who has the face of an exhausted gnu, the voice of an unstrung tennis racket, and a figure of no discernible shape." (A gnu, in case you're wondering, is a type of antelope.)" I was 18 when the movie came out and I found her rather fetching. linkI wouldn't take anything John Simon said seriously. He was an ass to everybody. He was totally critical to Glenda Jackson for having small breasts. He was a jerk. He did like Ingmar Bergman and that's about the only person he liked.
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Post by amyghost on May 7, 2019 12:44:45 GMT
...speaks out on various subjects including Oprah. "Critic John Simon wrote of the actress's debut performance in 1969's A Walk With Love and Death, directed by her father, John Huston: "There is a perfectly blank, supremely inept performance by Huston's daughter Anjelica, who has the face of an exhausted gnu, the voice of an unstrung tennis racket, and a figure of no discernible shape." (A gnu, in case you're wondering, is a type of antelope.)" I was 18 when the movie came out and I found her rather fetching. linkI wouldn't take anything John Simon said seriously. He was an ass to everybody. He was totally critical to Glenda Jackson for having small breasts. He was a jerk. He did like Ingmar Bergman and that's about the only person he liked. John Simon was capable of writing intelligent and perceptive reviews, but he seemed addicted to having to generate the shock value of placing really gratuitously nasty cracks about performers into virtually every review he wrote, and that habit sorely lessened the value of anything he had to say for me. I've seen him give unqualified praise to a tiny handful of actors, but a lot of the remarks he made about performers, and chiefly female performers, were unconscionable--he seemed unable to rate them on anything other than their physical appeal to him, and no matter how good their acting, if they didn't stack up looks-wise then they were lousy. The other problem with that--apart from the glaringly obvious one--was that many of the actresses he branded as 'dogs' were gorgeous women. Huston was a beauty, and Glenda Jackson was no slouch in her prime either. I won't even dignify his remarks regarding homosexuality, and his views regarding 'homosexual' plays here. They can be found online if anyone has the stomach to look them up, and they're disgusting, beneath anything a critic has legitimate cause to write.
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Post by hi224 on May 8, 2019 1:38:11 GMT
Yeah Simon is an ass.
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Post by amyghost on May 9, 2019 12:50:06 GMT
John Simon was capable of writing intelligent and perceptive reviews, but he seemed addicted to having to generate the shock value of placing really gratuitously nasty cracks about performers into virtually every review he wrote, and that habit sorely lessened the value of anything he had to say for me. I've seen him give unqualified praise to a tiny handful of actors, but a lot of the remarks he made about performers, and chiefly female performers, were unconscionable--he seemed unable to rate them on anything other than their physical appeal to him, and no matter how good their acting, if they didn't stack up looks-wise then they were lousy. The other problem with that--apart from the glaringly obvious one--was that many of the actresses he branded as 'dogs' were gorgeous women. Huston was a beauty, and Glenda Jackson was no slouch in her prime either. I won't even dignify his remarks regarding homosexuality, and his views regarding 'homosexual' plays here. They can be found online if anyone has the stomach to look them up, and they're disgusting, beneath anything a critic has legitimate cause to write. I have not heard of this critic, but he sounds intriguing, if for all the wrong reasons. Will have to look him up amy.
Huston has always been an asset to the films I have seen her in. She has a terrific screen presence, is a real and in the moment actress, no phoniness or pretense, unless she is of course acting a character with those traits, is in touch with her darker side, but balances it with her light and is always believable. She also has a sexy allure that appears to be of no effort for her to exude. I thank the universe for giving us Huston and you of course amy....
Simon enjoyed a fair amount of notoriety in the US for his scathing reviews that frequently included personal ad hominems regarding performers looks and stage mannerisms. He made more generalized headlines--outside the closed circuit of the theater world--with some pretty specious remarks about gay reviewers and 'gay plays': variety.com/2010/biz/markets-festivals/a-history-of-gay-bashing-1118019318/And was overheard, as he exited one production, making the remark "I can't wait until they [gay playwrights] all get AIDS and die" (he admitted to saying this when confronted by his own critics). It's somewhat sad, because as I said before, he was an intelligent and perceptive critic otherwise. But he'll likely be more remembered for his fatal weakness for the ugly bon mot than anything else. Gore Vidal, who cordially despised Simon, might have got in the best parting shot when he quipped in an essay, "What a nightmare, to wake up every morning and know you are John Simon". Meow. And when you brighten my morn with lovely compliments like the above (would I existed on anything like the Anjelica Huston plane, lol), I'm thankful to the creative powers of the cosmos for her, Gore, and most especially you too!
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Post by amyghost on May 11, 2019 13:36:13 GMT
Simon enjoyed a fair amount of notoriety in the US for his scathing reviews that frequently included personal ad hominems regarding performers looks and stage mannerisms. He made more generalized headlines--outside the closed circuit of the theater world--with some pretty specious remarks about gay reviewers and 'gay plays': variety.com/2010/biz/markets-festivals/a-history-of-gay-bashing-1118019318/And was overheard, as he exited one production, making the remark "I can't wait until they [gay playwrights] all get AIDS and die" (he admitted to saying this when confronted by his own critics). It's somewhat sad, because as I said before, he was an intelligent and perceptive critic otherwise. But he'll likely be more remembered for his fatal weakness for the ugly bon mot than anything else. Gore Vidal, who cordially despised Simon, might have got in the best parting shot when he quipped in an essay, "What a nightmare, to wake up every morning and know you are John Simon". Meow. And when you brighten my morn with lovely compliments like the above (would I existed on anything like the Anjelica Huston plane, lol), I'm thankful to the creative powers of the cosmos for her, Gore, and most especially you too! Your comments, insights and intelligent prose is always a welcome pleasure.
Just reading up on him, he is still alive apparently. Ebert called him out in his memoir, by saying his comments are repugnant about actors looks, they can't help that and especially when he looks like a rat himself.
I will have to find some of his reviews, but he appeared to perceive these actors as caricatures, after reading a few of his comments, like Minnelli, Streisand, K. Turner and can't take them seriously, or filters how he would have perhaps drawn them—if he has that talent—by writing it down it instead. I'd say he is just a bitter narcissist, with a high IQ and would have been a uber-snob regarding his own intelligence compared to others. Have met many people like that in my lifetime. Borderline sociopathic. Not very pleasant to be around, unless you are on their intellectual level, or have something they want from you.
I have Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. Loved the film—Reed was a real cutie—tried to read the book, but wasn't quite getting it. This was over 20yrs ago though. Simon's a ripe (in all senses of the word ) 93 year old worlding now--bile is a great preservative, lol--and I don't think he's much active these days. No doubt, whatever one thought of him, he was a veritable hornet's nest, and generated his own weather throughout his life. He even had his brush with celebrity scandal by being peripherally involved in the Claus von Bulow murder case, having dated Alexandra Isles prior to her having become von B.'s mistress; Simon was questioned about Ms. Isles whereabouts when she did not show up for her turn on the witness stand (no, he didn't off her--she eventually made her appearance), giving him a brush with notoriety of another type than what he was generally used to. I particularly bolded those remarks regarding Simon's personality, because they're almost word-for-word what I've read a number of people describe him as over the years. A fairly brilliant man, but lacking in humility and over-gifted with hubris and insolence: never an appealing combination. My hat is off to you for being a fan of Myra's! I love the film too, even though it routinely used to turn up on those 'fifty most awful' sort of lists, and even Gore himself disowned it. The novel is--like most of Gore's 'entertainments' (his word for the parodistic, non-serious novels he wrote)--steeped in scathing satire of the American cultural scene, most particularly in the place where the twin American neuroses of sex and power intersect with the insanity of Hollywood, and can be a bit of a tough nut to crack for those who grew up outside of that scene (sort of on the order of Evelyn Waugh's satirizations of the British class system, I think--still hilarious even if one wasn't a part of that system, but holding all sorts of especial nuances of wit for those who lived it); the film stripped away a good bit of that, and concentrated more on the purely sex farce angle. I have often suspected that Myra's alter-ego Myron, though primarily a spoof of film critic and scholar Parker Tyler, included a bit of swipe at Simon as well. It's of some interest that, despised though he was by the theater and film world, Simon seems to have been seldom outright parodied onscreen--one instance I recall was an episode of the 80's crime drama Murder She Wrote, where actor Dean Stockwell did a marvelous turn as 'Elliot Easterbrook', a sibilant and sleazy, and most obvious skewering of Simon. Alas, it was too brief as--unsurprisingly--he was the guest murderee for that installment .
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Post by JudgeJuryDredd on May 15, 2019 5:23:11 GMT
Sounds like Oprah and Murray are asses. Well he did insult Lucy Liu behind the scenes of Charlie's Angels. That's why he's not in Full Throttle. He also didn't get along with director McG either, I forget if Murray actually headbutted him on set or said in an interview that he suggested he be hung by the neck but either way there's bad blood in the water.
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Post by JudgeJuryDredd on May 15, 2019 5:29:22 GMT
Hell she was fetching all the way up from Swashbuckler to I'd say about the second Addams Family movie. Maybe Daddy Day Care. For me up to Life Aquatic, based on John Wick 3 I'd argue she still kind of has 'it'.
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