‘Tis the season for media outlets to take one final shot at the few conservative elements within Tinseltown.
Case in point: Entertainment Weekly film critics Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum cobbled together some of their best and worst movies scenes of 2012 over at EW.com. You’d think such a feature would have nothing to do with scoring flimsy political points. Think again.
Here’s critic Lisa Schwarzbaum’s choice for the worst scene of the year:
Clint Eastwood has made a late-career specialty out of playing grumpy old men–broken-down loners and growlers who want everyone off the damn lawn. It is arrrghhh! unfortunate that, in playing a broken-down, growling loner of a baseball scout in ”Trouble With the Curve,” Eastwood is first seen at a toilet bowl, talking either to his urine or his penis (reasonable people can disagree as to which) in an effort to get his day off to a good start with a hearty pee. Earlier this year at the Republican National Convention, the fellow famously talked to an empty chair. Get this man some friends!
Har har. Out of all the films released this year she picks a throwaway moment meant to let audiences know Eastwood’s character in “Trouble with the Curve” is, well, a character? Nah, it’s just an excuse to bash Eastwood for daring to critique The One with a brilliant visual metaphor during last summer’s RNC.
That empty chair is even more prophetic given recent events, from the president handing off the weighty gun control debate to his vice president to him handing of the weightier fiscal cliff debate to his vice president.