Mitch Perry
Good Monday morning to you all.
I went to the cinema yesterday before settling back and watching the later games on the NFL schedule yesterday, seeing the new Bradley Cooper vehicle, “Burnt.”
Have you heard about it? In it, the Oscar-nominated star plays a ‘bad-boy’ chef who reached the highs and delved into the lower depths as a star chef in Paris. the film begins with him serving his purgatory shucking oysters in New Orleans for a couple of years, before attempting his comeback by going to London to try to make it as a three-star Michelin chef. It’s got the requisite food porn shots and is pretty solid entertainment, as far such flicks go.
Before the film there was the unveiling of the first full fledged trailer for Quentin Tarantino‘s, “The Hateful Eight,” which arrives in some cities on Christmas Day, and everywhere else a few weeks later. On its surface, it’s hard to tell if it has the same box office appeal as his last two films, 2009’, “Inlglorius Basterds” and 2012’s, “Django Unchained.”
And that box office take is further imperiled due to Q.T.’s controversial comments nine days ago at a rally in New York City, where he called police officers “murderers.”
“When I see murders, I do not stand by … I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers,” the director told a crowd of about 300 at a rally in Washington Square Park. It occurred four days after NYPD Officer Randolph Holder was fatally shot in the head while chasing a gunman in East Harlem. When asked about the timing of the rally, Tarantino called it “unfortunate.”
Since then, he’s been getting hammered by police unions across the land, with pressure building on producer Harvey Weinstein to have Tarentino apologize.
Now, apparently, he will.
The Hollywood media website The Wrap reports that “an individual with knowledge of the situation said the director is planning to explain his comments in an opinion piece and apologize to those who were offended. The exact time and media outlet will be decided by the director, the individual said.”
The tensions between law enforcement and the black community in particular has been prominent over the past year, and Tarentino’s comments show that words themselves can now be toxic in the current environment.
In other news …
Rick Kriseman and Bob Buckhorn signed a letter (with well over 100 other Democratic mayors around the land) that was released on Friday endorsing Hillary Clinton‘s presidential candidacy.
We saw Mayor Kriseman participate in a panel discussion at the Florida Democratic Party Convention on Saturday, where he dismissed critics of raising the minimum wage as having “crap” responses.
One of the big stories coming out of the convention was liberal icon Barney Frank flying down to Orlando to show up and endorse Patrick Murphy’s candidacy over Alan Grayson for U.S. Senate in the Democratic primary.
On Meet The Press yesterday, Jeb Bush showed no inclination to back away from criticism of Marco Rubio that there’s something of value to showing up for your (tax-payer subsidized) job.
Oh, and there was this little notice statement in a court filing last week by the Florida Dept. of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles regarding Uber’s insurance policy that seems sort of significant.
