LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019E3
WATCH THE TRAILER AT WWW.PAINANDGLORYMOVIE.COMwritten and directed byPedro Almodóvar
pain
and
glory
El Deseo presents
a film by Almodóvar
HHHHH
“ALMODÓVAR AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWERS.”
-TIME OUT
“RANKS RIGHT UP THERE WITH ALMODÓVAR’S GREATEST!
HAUNTING IMAGES THAT TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY.
ANTONIO BANDERAS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS CAREER.
THIS IS ACTING OF THE HIGHEST ORDER.”
-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
“A TRIUMPH! ALMODÓVAR’S BEST
SINCE ‘VOLVER’ AND POSSIBLY ‘TALK TO HER’.”
-Justin Chang, LOS ANGELES TIMES
WINNER
BEST ACTOR
ANTONIO BANDERAS
CANNES FILM
FESTIVALHOLLYWOODAt Sunset & Vine (323) 615-2550 arclightcinemas.com
Fri:9:15, 10:45, 12:00, 1:00, 3:00, 4:15, 7:15, 8:30, 10:30Sat:9:00, 10:15,
12:00, 1:00, 2:30, 3:45, 5:15, 6:45, 7:45, 8:45, 9:45, 10:45, 12:15am
Sun:9:00, 10:15, 12:00, 1:00, 2:30, 3:45, 5:15, 6:45, 7:45, 8:45, 9:45, 10:45
Mon:10:00, 12:45, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 8:15, 10:00Tue:10:30, 11:45, 12:45, 1:45,
3:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:00Wed:10:45, 12:30, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 7:10, 8:30, 10:25WEST LOS ANGELESat W. Pico & Westwood
(310) 470-0492 landmarktheatres.com
Fri-Sun:10:50, 11:50, 1:30, 2:30, 4:10, 5:10, 7:00,
7:50, 9:35, 10:25Mon & Thur:11:35, 1:00, 2:15,
3:40, 5:00, 7:35, 10:10Tue&Wed:11:50, 1:30,
2:30, 4:10, 5:10, 7:00, 7:50, 9:35, 10:25EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTS START TODAY
CULTURE
Niro in “Taxi Driver” when a
reporter asked about specif-
ics of the phone call, then
said: “Are you talkin’ to me?”
Yes, the reporter was,
which seemed like pretty
easy math since Trump was
the only president up there
whose shady chat with the
Ukraine had gone viral.
“We have the president of
Finland. Ask him a ques-
tion!” ordered Trump, re-
peatedly, eliciting audible
gasps from a press pool
who’d thought they’d seen it
all by now. One thing was
clear: They’d all now need to
come up with a stronger de-
scriptor than “unhinged.”
The showman who’d
spent his whole life chasing
fame, whether as the heir to
a real estate fortune or the
cameo king of films starring
real actors, has finally been
burned by the limelight.
And nothing about his for-
mer roles has prepared him
for being this out of control.
As owner of the Miss
USA pageants, Trump en-
joyed portraying the rich
playboy surrounded by
(very) young women. As the
son of a property baron, he
was able to play the success-
ful businessman even when
he wasn’t (which was more
often than not). As the
wheeling and dealing casino
and hotel mogul, he
anointed himself the king of
Atlantic City. And as the
puff-chested boss on “The
Apprentice,” he harnessed
all of his skills as a performer
to create a TV catchphrase:
“You’re fired!”
Trump has always been
tailor-made for reality TV.
Self-centered? Check. Able
to call attention to himself
for no discernible reason?
Check. Bizarre sense of style
culled from a bygone era
that never happened?
Check.
Cutting jokes and know-
ing smirks were his thing.
And once he hit the cam-
paign trail, he used those
ratings-grabbing traits to
knock his opponents off bal-
ance.
But it’s now Trump who’s
struggling to keep his foot-
ing.
His new problems are too
big to be papered over by
tired nicknames and verbal
camouflage, but he tried
Wednesday when he called
House Intelligence Commit-
tee Chairman Adam Schiff
“Shifty Schiff ” and said
Speaker of the House NancyPelosi liked to “pass out sub-
poenas like cookies.” And
the gaslighting technique
that worked so well for him
on his rise to power — “I
know you’re crooked/racist/
old, but what am I?!” —
made him look weak and
scared in the new context of
impending impeachment.
His superpower — his
ability to feint, to adapt, to at
least seemthe confident per-
former, even under duress —
may be useless in this post-
whistleblower world: Unable
to weaponize the transcript
of the phone call, Trump
looked more like one of his
victims than the victor when
he listlessly commented
about the scandal last week.
And on Wednesday,
Trump finally devolved from
a B-list performer into a
rogue actor, with dangerous
implications. He accused
Schiff of a crime punishable
by death, denounced the
journalists before him as
“corrupt” and inferred that
“spies” like the whistle-
blower should face capital
punishment.
Niinisto stood near-mo-
tionless at the other lectern,
likely wondering what the
hell he’d done to deserve a
place on that stage — and if
it might be cooler in the
molten core of hell.
Even the White House’s
unofficial PR shop, Fox
News, had to admit “the
rhetoric” was angrier and
that “it feels like things have
changed.”
Chris Whipple, author of
“The Gatekeepers: How the
White House Chiefs of Staff
Define Every Presidency,”
put it another way when he
commented about the presi-
dent’s presser on MSNBC.
“We’re in a scary place,” he
said of the president’s state
of mind. “In the darkest days
of Watergate, when Richard
Nixon was walking the halls,
talking to the oil portraits
and drinking heavily, [Secre-
tary of Defense] James
Schlesinger made sure that
he had the nuclear codes
safe. Richard Nixon’s mental
state was far superior, I
think, than Donald Trump’s
mental state we saw today.”
Perhaps it’s his latest act
— in the role of an embattled
president who’d rather start
a civil war than concede his
own indiscretions — but if
Trump’s current perform-
ance is any indication, he
may come completely un-
done before this show’s re-
newed.Trump’s mojo
takes a steep
dive suddenly
PRESIDENTTrump’s comments during a news
conference on Wednesday sparked surprise.
Chip SomodevillaGetty Images[Trump,from E1]ambience in the eternal,
doomed summer of ’60s L.A.
at the margins of the movie
business.
“There’s an L.A. quality
to Brad Pitt’s character
where he works in Holly-
wood but doesn’t live there,”
Tarantino said. “He’s given
his life to the entertainment
business but doesn’t have
anything to show for it. He
drives home to Panorama
City, and in that time you
hear four songs, which gives
you an idea of how long it
takes to drive there.”
For Lindsay, the return to
the stage has indeed been a
long drive through a career
that, if he hadn’t lived it,
could have been scripted by
Tarantino. It wasn’t all L.A.
classic rock; Lindsay per-
formed the synth score for
the 1980 Japanese action
flick “Shogun Assassin,” a
favorite sample source for
the Wu-Tang Clan and other
rappers.
But on this night, he did
his best to invoke the mood
of “Once Upon a Time,” per-
forming three songs from
the movie with a choral en-
semble from Orange Coun-
ty’s Tesoro High School.
Lindsay’s voice still had
that velvety touch that
made long, aimless drives
through the Hollywood flat-
lands so moody back then.
Tarantino almost always
makes stars of his deep-cut
soundtrack picks, but this
was something else: an ever-
rarer chance to hear the ac-
tual voice ringing through
that house on Cielo Drive,
back before everything went
dark.The ’60s sound,
then and now
[Lindsay,from E2]