Fresh Spin
This week’s Friday night movie fix was a big winner, Promising Young Woman (2020), the brainchild of writer/director Emerald Fennell, a Londoner and Oxford grad, who was pregnant during the shooting. Set in suburban Ohio, it’s the story of a young medical school dropout, now 30, working in a coffee shop, stifled by an incident that led to the suicide of her best friend. Her troubles are brought to the fore when she meets an ex-classmate, now a pediatric surgeon. She plots revenge against another of their peers. This is refreshing spin on the theme. I won’t comment any further on the plot. Carey Mulligan, who did a great turn as Daisy Buchanan in the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby, is terrific in the lead, her performance garnering an Oscar nod. She too is London born. The multi-talented Bo Burnham lends able support as the doc, but the film belongs to Mulligan and Fennell, the latter copping an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a nomination for her work at the helm, her first full length feature after a short and work in TV. There are also 20 titles listed under her name at IMDb in the category of Actor, the most notable the PBS series Call the Midwife. 135,000+ users at IMDb have rated Promising Young Woman, forging to a consensus of 7.5 on a scale of ten. There’s no violence until the climax. There’s profanity but no nudity. The sex is discussed, heard but not seen. This is a more cerebral crime drama than most. It had me debating whether the retribution was worth it, even just. I would say no. It runs less than two hours. I’m shocked the flick grossed only $17+ million worldwide. It’s budget is estimated at $5-$10 million. I’d be surprised if DVD sales and rentals, and streaming haven’t been brisk. Here’s Mulligan in character, followed by a pic of her director:
Headline from nypost.com: “Biden tours Rome ahead of ‘climate’ summit — with 85-vehicle motorcade.” Out for a spin. I assume the entire fleet was electric — not!
I’m not sure how significant this is, but I hope it’s the start of a trend. NYP headline: “NYC public school enrollment dips by nearly 2% this year.”
Know-it-alls strike again, headline from foxnews.com: “Anti-Sinema protesters crash Arizona wedding to confront senator.” How will the mainstream media spin such disgraceful behavior — if it even bothers to report it?
Yesterday’s forecast was wrong. The rain ended just before it was time for the floating book shop. My thanks to Bill, who bought The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johan von Goethe; and to the woman who selected a paperback in Russian; and to the gentleman who parked his bike and purchased Eragon and Brisingr, parts one and three of Christopher Paolini’s runaway best seller fantasy series The Inheritance Cycle.
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