The "Save A Little Somethin' " Edition

Dec 04, 2022

Dear Subscribers,

In case you have time for some watching/going this Holiday Season:

Film Round-Up:

Nan Goldin: All The Beauty and The Bloodshed— high high recommend for this docu (which will most definitely be nominated for an Academy Award which the fantastic director Laura Poitras has already won for another feature doc (and was nominated in the same category for yet another)). The film covers three subjects which would each be worth its own movie, and the director somehow manages to weave all three stories together without giving any of them short shrift: Nan Goldin’s (insane, troubling, fascinating) upbringing and general biography; her journey as an artist and photographer; and then the main event, how she, post OxyContin addiction, actually brought the Sackler family down in the art world and contributed mightily to the destruction of their shielded reputation in the regular world, even well into the reporting about their company as they continued to battle it off.

Speaking of the reporting, the filmmakers interviewed Patrick Radden Keefe extensively. He’s the guy who wrote the blockbuster book about the Sacklers, ‘Empire Of Pain.’ In relation to how the filmmakers brought the story to life, what he said was doubly mesmerizing. So, in the Late To The Party category, I finally started to read (actually, listen) to it. Usually, when I read the looooong New Yorker excerpt of a book that becomes a bestseller and people say “no but you really have to read the book, it’s amazing!,” I start to read it and I’m like “you know what, I’m good with the article!” Well now I’m that person saying— you need to read this book. Riproaring saga. Like The Lehman Trilogy (3 Brothers! Jews! Massive wealth! Horrific deception! No important women in their lives!) it is really compelling.

Knives Out II (Whatever it’s called, Glass Onion: blah blah): Fun Fun Fun! It was in theaters for a week before it premieres on Netflix, so it could be eligible for Academy Award noms which I (and everybody else) predict it shall garner.

The Fablemans: You know what? I didn’t have high hopes, tbh. What I will say is that there are many, many Steven Spielberg films that I enjoyed less. No, I’m kidding. Well I’m not kidding, but what I mean is that I really enjoyed seeing this film. It was a really good coming of age/high school angst story. Very Spielberg, but honestly I didn’t realize…he had trauma! And I mean, my God, the man deserves to make whatever film he wants to make, in any case. All the actors, particularly Michelle Williams, Gabriel LaBelle (okay sure I’m biased, he is the son of a friend from college. Wow!), and Seth Rogen were really, really good. Like they were incredibly well directed. I do have a question for Mr. Spielberg if and when I next see him (Steven, if you’re reading this, it’s about the scene at the lockers after prom).

The last time I saw Spielberg was at the opening of the Transformers ride at Universal Studios about ten years ago! He was very gracious to my son who was around 10 at the time. We (me and my son, and I assume Mr. Spielberg as well) loved the first two Transformers films. So I told my son to concentrate on that when he met Spielberg and needed something to say. The challenge was that I had insisted we watch E.T. right before we met him…which my son (the only kid on the face of the earth) HATED. After I said 30 times “Don’t tell him you hated E.T.!!,” I was afraid it was going to be like a “don’t say ‘pink elephants’ moment. #awkward. But he didn’t and Spielberg was beyond polite and nice. We all went into the reconstituted Backdraft (sorry, Ron Howard!) now Transformers, ride, in a completely closed theme park and it was cool to take the maiden voyage.

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Mine was fun and delicious and obviously I took some time to see/look/listen to a lot (next week, TV Round-up!). But also, I can’t believe how much news piled up in the scant week I took off. So I hope you enjoy the not too stale edition of today’s LZSP. It’s a deep, but maybe lopsided, curation of the week’s most important news by and about women, delivered straight to your inbox. Politics, Pop Culture and everything in between.

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See you next Sunday,