Disney’s coming up for our coming up Christmas. Pitting father against daughter. Jamie Foxx versus Corinne Foxx. Both in one-word titles that start with S. Jamie in Pixar’s “Soul.” Corinne in college football flick “Safety.”
Corinne: “I know nothing about sports and my character’s a big sports fan. I had to learn football vernacular. With our tough year, we all need a movie like this about family, love, connection. You’ll hug your loved ones a little tighter, plus you’ll need some Kleenex.”
Jamie: “Mine’s on loving your neighbors. Old-time kindness where everybody knows your name. Celebrating that sense of community.”
Question: Which Foxx will out Foxx the other?
Bits & bobs
For $150 Casting Networks is looking for “Santa Claus in a Bubble.” Age 45 to 99. One live appearance. Any ethnicity … For an unbalanced bridge table leg there’s Joey Bishop’s bio “Deconstructing the Rat Pack: Joey, the Mob, and the Summit” … For Christmas there’s Carleton Varney’s book “Romance and Rhododendrons: My Love Affair With America’s Resort — the Greenbrier” … For conversation there’s the Beach Cafe delivering unordered but appreciated chicken soup to stay-home customers … For whatthehell there’s the upstater whose leftover takeout sushi in a trash bag got eaten by raccoon neighbors.
Plenty of screen time
If an awards campaign still exists it’s pushing September’s release “The Artist’s Wife” and Lena Olin, 65, married to Swedish director Lasse Hallström. Filmed in the Hamptons, she plays Bruce Dern’s wife. She’s also in Amazon’s series “Hunters” with Pacino. And if it’ll help, the director’s Tom Dolby whose pa invented Dolby sound. And a series from the book “Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War” — the title’s longer than the show — will have Michael Douglas and Christoph Waltz play Ronnie and Gorby.
Confidentially
Due to my overflowing innate kindness and extreme bottomless warmth I share this sweet loving tender item: Awaiting her COVID test, a lady babbled about lousy husband, lousy marriage, lousy pandemic. On line ahead of her, social distancing, wearing masks, divorce lawyers Michael Stutman and Raoul Felder. They chatted. Before either had a Q-tip up his nose, she got signed as a client.
Film enlistees
More holiday stuff. “Greenland.” Giant comet rocketing toward Earth. Gerard Butler saving his family.
Scott Glenn, playing the father-in-law: “Great disaster movie about a fractured family [that naturally gets unfractured with rebirth, healing, etc., etc.]. Because I’m a real-life Marine — 173rd Airborne Brigade — we made this character a veteran.
My New York friends are bohemian poets, dancers, musicians, straight, gay, super liberal. In hometown Idaho, they’re unbohemian cops, plumbers, pilots, Republicans. The story’s about work together or you don’t make it.”
Forget ho-ho-ho and kumbaya. Another disaster, COVID, pushed back this summer movie to start streaming Friday.
Forget Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Latest news about Britain’s Prince Andy is the fuzz may get him for lousy driving. Whizzing past the Queen with some new bimbo.
Only in London, kids, only in London.