'21 & Over' - Crap from the Past and from the Writers of 'The Hangover'
Honestly, I did not laugh once during “21 and Over.” Maybe I chuckled a bit at one or two scenes, but that really doesn’t qualify as a laugh. This film is essentially a rip-off of “The Hangover” with elements of “Superbad” thrown in for good measure. It aspires to be a classic comedy like those films and even “Animal House” and “Adventures in Babysitting” among others, but it does not come even…
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Andrew Scott, Vogue: April 2024.
by Zing Tsjeng, Photos by Annie Leibovitz
Ripley, in other words, is the hero of the tale. “That’s why he fascinates so many,” says Scott. “There’s been so many iterations of him. I think it’s because people root for him.” Actors like Alain Delon and Dennis Hopper have tried the role; Matt Damon played him as an obsequious, lower-class naïf; John Malkovich, as a slimy, camp killer. Scott’s Ripley is different; a watchful loner escaping rodent-infested poverty, more at home among art than he is around people. Musician and actor Johnny Flynn plays his first victim—the monied Dickie Greenleaf—and Dakota Fanning is Dickie’s suspicious ex-girlfriend. “I find Tom quite vulnerable,” Scott tells me. “I don’t think he’s necessarily lonely, but I certainly think he’s solitary…. He seems to me by his nature that he just can’t fit in. He’s trying to survive.”
In Ripley, Zaillian extracts maximum Hitchcockian dread from every creaky footstep. But most sinister of all is Scott’s face, which exhibits a sharklike steeliness throughout. It’s a performance that exudes queasy force. Is Ripley a scammer, a psychopath, or both? “There’s so many things lurking beneath him that I’ve been very reluctant to diagnose him with anything. I never thought of him as a sociopath or murderous,” Scott declares. “It’s up to everybody else to characterize him or call him whatever they want.”
As we weave through tourists near the Tower of London, barely anybody notices Scott, save for a faint glimmer of recognition among mainly young women. He seems to draw reassurance from it. “I don’t like to think about it too much, if I’m honest,” he muses of fame. “I find it a little bit, er, frightening.” He is known but not blockbuster-recognizable, although he is in the upcoming Back in Action with Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. What stunts did he do? “I can’t give that away, I’m afraid, or somebody from Netflix will come and shoot me in the head.”
What’s been on Scott’s mind the most hasn’t been acting at all, in fact, but art. As a 17-year-old, he was offered his first movie role on the same day he was given a scholarship to study painting. He chose acting, but has recently been thinking about Oliver Burkeman’s philosophical self-help tract from 2021, Four Thousand Weeks, which makes the case for focusing on the five things you truly want to accomplish. “For me at the moment, it’s like, What do you want to do? What do you want to say?”
He scrolls through his phone to show me his work. There’s a watercolor of a couple arguing in a restaurant in rich reds and greens, line drawings of friends and people on the beach, and two self-portraits. “It’s a bit weird,” he acknowledges of his depiction of himself, all bulbous forehead and Pan-like tufts of hair. His brisk, nervy lines are reminiscent of Egon Schiele or Francis Bacon, who turns out to be one of his favorite painters. “Well, God, I’ll take that,” he mutters at the comparison. He would like someday to go to art school. “I don’t ever regret it,” he says of acting. “But I suppose you just get to a stage where you think, What else? That’s one of the big painful things in life for me, where you can’t quite live all the lives.” As he gets older, he feels the tug toward revisiting old working relationships, including with Waller-Bridge: “We’ve definitely got things cooking,” he smiles. “I’d love to work with her again. She’s just a singular, wonderful person.” For her part, Waller-Bridge says: “I’d love to see him do a fully unhinged slapstick comedy character. Someone who is outraged at everything, all of the time.”
As we round the pavement and the Tate Modern looms back into sight, he recalls a poster he received in 2017—a monstrously large graphic that detailed every week in a human life span. “It’s your entire life if you live to 80—you have to fill in all the bits that you’ve already lived,” he remembers in awe, “a visually terrifying gift.” What did he do with it? “I didn’t hold on to it for too long.” Easy come, easy go: We finally finish our loop around the Thames and, as Scott disappears back into the throng, anonymous just the way he likes it, it occurs to me that the actor has many lives to live yet. ■
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Midnight Pals: Funny Ducks
Alan Moore: [appearing in a clap of thunder]
Poe: the arch magus!
King: the arch magus!
Moore: i have a story to tell
Moore: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the sinister ducks
Moore: it's a song about ducks
Moore: but it's not simply a song
Moore: it is also a warning
Moore: be afraid, foolish mortals, for the sinister ducks are coming
Moore: watch the skies!
Alan Moore: Everyone thinks they’re such sweet little things!
Moore: Soft downy feathers and nice little wings.
Moore: But there’s a poison I’d like to administer
Moore: You think they’re cuddly, but I think they’re sinister!
Moore: Ducks! Ducks! Quack-quack! Quack-quack!
Moore: Ducks! Ducks! Quack-quack! Quack-quack!
King:
Koontz:
Lovecraft:
Poe:
Barker: so uh
Barker: what exactly are you trying to accomplish here
Barker: what the hell was that
Poe: clive
Poe: if the arch magus wants to sing a funny song about ducks
Poe: you just let the arch magus sing a funny song about ducks
Koontz: i liked it
Poe: yes dean
Koontz: i liked the part with the quacking!
Poe: yes dean
Barker: are we supposed to be scared of ducks?
Scott Baker: ducks?!? ducks?!
Baker: [panicking] did someone say ducks?!?
Poe: calm down scott
Poe: there aren't any ducks
Baker: [nervously] are you sure??
Baker: cuz ducks can be
Baker: quite sinister!
Barker: what the hell was that about
Moore: it's a song about ducks
Moore: foolish mortals, you fail to grasp the unearthly power of this piece
Moore: i'm thinking of sending it to dr demento
Moore: i think it could even make the funny five
King: alan would you consider jamming with the rock bottom remainders
Moore: foolish mortals, the arch magus is no mere singer of trifles!
Moore: the auric emanations of this song sigil contain a mighty power
Moore: equal or greater to that of a spike jones or even a stan freberg!
Moore: can you not feel the psychic vibrations of the great weave echoing in its departed notes?
Moore: [lightning crackling from his fingers] truly i am the most powerful song sigil warlock of all!
King:
King: so
King: is that a no on a rock bottom remainder jam session?
Moore: rock bottom remainders?
Moore: impudent fool! the arch magus does not deign to perform for the pleasure of mere gut pluckers!
Moore: this power… requires a proper display…
Moore: just wait til i headline at FuMPFest!!!
Moore: this song sigil is as powerful as any cast by the mages of old
Moore: not even the great warlock weird al yankovic could cast a spell of such magnitude!
King: whoa whoa whoa alan careful there
King: don't say something you can't take back
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