I have been quite consciously and deliberately trying to avoid posting political stuff on here for the last week, hence why I haven’t said anything about a number of things like Oolong trying to interfere with British politics as well as American, the New Orleans bombing, other stuff… been trying to find less disheartening things to post, stuff that’s more sort of arts-related, books, films, music, etc, and leave politics out for a while. Despite which, here’s something that kind of crosses the two streams…
Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video. The streaming arm of the tech giant got exclusive licensing rights for a streaming and theatrical release later this year, the company said Sunday.
Filming is already under way on the documentary. The company said in a statement that the film will give viewers an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes look” at the former and incoming US first lady and also promised a “truly unique story”. […]
The film is the latest connection between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. The company in December announced plans to donate $1m to help fund the president-elect’s second inauguration – and said that it would also stream the event on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1m. […]
Bezos in October did not allow the Post to endorse a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and to protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. This weekend, a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist quit her job there after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before the president-elect.
This is weirdly timely, cos I saw someone on Threads a few days ago ask whatever happened to Brett Ratner, who I have frankly never given a shit about so I had no idea, and so I went to look up his Wiki entry and… OH. Sexual harrassment, eh? Yeah, that sort of thing can put a spanner in the works of your career, even in Hollywood, and it evidently did so in Brett’s case… I see him listed as producer on precisely one film since these allegations started in 2017; I also observe that he moved to Israel using the Law of Return, and I saw something somewhere suggesting he did so because Israel doesn’t extradite to the US or something… no idea if that’s accurate or not, but I presume he’s not too worried about actually having to answer for what he allegedly did, not if he’s moving back to the US to make this thing about Trump’s missus. Maybe Trump’s protecting him or something. Anyway, that‘s what happened to Brett Ratner, evidently… somehow Jeff Bezos decided he was the right person to direct this piece of toadying for his streaming service. Trying to keep in with Mushroom Cock for when the latter finally tires of that South African character, too, no doubt. Fuck I hate all of these fucking people.
Parenthetically…
That, apparently, was another piece of work by Brett Ratner, being a music video for CANNIBAL CORPSE of all bands. I spotted this listed in his Wiki entry, where it kind of stood out to me, not least because otherwise his music video filmography is entirely made up of hip-hop, R&B and pop videos. How the hell did he end up working with THIS lot? Makes no sense at all. Either way, AV Club were unimpressed:
Like Fincher, Brett Ratner also got his start in the world of music videos, working with the likes of LL Cool J and Heavy D And The Boyz before making his first feature, Money Talks, in 1997. Also like Fincher, Ratner hasn’t left his music-video past behind now that he’s an A-list filmmaker: He frequently lends his short-form magic to club-hopping cohorts like Mariah Carey and Jamie Foxx. In 2006—the same year he gifted X-Men: The Last Stand to the world—Ratner stepped out from behind the velvet rope and crawled deep into the sewer of gory, Satan-hailing metal by directing the video for Cannibal Corpse’s “Make Them Suffer.” While the director/band combination makes for an even crrrazier couple than Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker from Ratner’s Rush Hour movies, “Make Them Suffer” itself is a thoroughly mundane metal video loaded with de rigueur strobe lights and smoke machines. Impressively, Ratner found yet another forum in which to be mediocre.
Ouch.
