Making that movie magic
LIGHTS! Cameras! The action’s Canoe Place. Oscar ceremony watching on a 15-foot screen. Sunday. The Hamptons. Grand Ballroom.
Three-course menu. Oscar-themed cocktails whatever that means. $75 a ticket.
PBS critics Bill McCuddy, Lisa Rosman and Neil Rosen provide banter, movie-themed gifts plus a grand prize for whoever’s the winner. (Or leaves first.)
Not to shine at this above evening is “Imaginary.”
The flick’s about a creepy stuffed bear come to life.
Betty Buckley, unafraid to star in this thing, says: “I play a sort of monk. A lonely socially awkward isolated student of magic, spirituality, the occult, Shamanism, witchcraft” — and whatever else they can shove in.
Lotsa luck.
Fur real
BESIDES staring at your dwindling groceries, this week you can again focus on Hollywood repeating itself. Soon we’ll get “Gone With the Wind 3.”
But now is “Kung Fu Panda 4,” with Awkwafina and Viola Davis.
Also Jack Black: “My character is like a child at heart and is my favorite part to play. I’m best when having fun. Joking around like when I was a kid. That’s always been my secret sauce. I’m fun, ridiculous, embarrassing. People can relate to that.”
Opens Friday. So go, chop-chop, and tell me about this kungfoolery. I’ll be home with my coloring book.
Kim and Putin stay cozy
THIS is beyond my paygrade. A Korean War vet asked me to print it.
N. Korea’s Kim loves Putin who gave him a million-dollar armored limousine. Stalin and Mao sponsored 1950s Korean War to undermine US, UN, NATO — as Kim, Xi, Putin attempt now. Then, American boots were on the ground. Today in Ukraine it’s Russian boots.
Russia’s reminded Kim of his country’s debt. Needing no reminder, Kim’s said: “We have strong anti-US sentiments. We suffered great damage at the genocidal aggression hands of US imperialists.” He blames Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on America’s rejection of Russia’s “reasonable and just demand . . . for security.”
Kim has shipped 6,700 arms containers to what he calls “Great Russia.”
Korean War vet: “Shall those who make wars, shoot prisoners, enslave citizens or capture hostages displace the rule of those who survive with God’s hands to guide us — or does mankind eventually choose to perish in the dead existence of a godless world?”
Not so Great
Ancient history, predating Alexei Navalny’s death: Peter the Great’s son, bearing Alexei’s same first name, escaped to the Alps because of his father’s cruelty. Suspicious minds warned: “Do not return. Beware, if you do your father will have you publicly beheaded.” The young tsarevich returned to Russia. His brutal father put him to death.
AMERICA. Doing so well that today’s dollar is worth nothing. Value of a buck now? Low. How low? A customer was caught passing counterfeit bills — and got a ticket for loitering.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.