From the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s, certain elite critics (the late David Chute leading the pack) sold the legend or more precisely the promotional hype about the florid, anti-realistic, furiously kinetic brand of John Woo-stamped action cinema. Chute and others filing from the proverbial “China desk.” Everyone fell for it, and I’m not saying it wasn’t a signature genre or a real-deal “thing” (it obviously was), but thank God that era is over and done with.

Because to me it was always more about the “sell” than the actual cinematic reality, which is to say the flaunting of brazen, high-style cartoonish-ness. Action-driven (or more precisely action-opera driven and certainly fighting the principles of physics tooth and nail) as opposed to plot- or character-driven.

New York / Vulture‘s Bilge Elbiri is celebrating all the same. “Absurd, grotesque, sublime”, etc.

Ron Howard‘s Eden (Vertical, 8.22) is a total flop, of course. Nobody wants to hang with a few headstrong German contrarians living hand-to-mouth on a remote island in the 1930s. I would have seen it nonetheless, but with all the packing and preparation I couldn’t find the time.

There’s something generally dull and flatliney about solitary survival films set on sandy remote islands…Randall Kleiser‘s The Blue Lagoon, the last third of Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness, Ivan Reitman‘s Six Days Seven Nights, Peter Weir‘s The Mosquito Coast, Stuart Heisler‘s Island of Desire, Michael Powell‘s Age of Consent…stuck there, no escaping, later.

In my book only three such films have “worked” — Robert Zemeckis‘s Cast Away (’00), Ken Annakin‘s Swiss Family Robinson (1960 Disney film) and Nicolas Roeg‘s Castaway (’86).

Agreed, Castaway is a tiny bit dull for a lack of story tension, but I was half-taken with…okay, with Amanda Donohoe‘s nudity. A Cannon release, I wrote the press kit for it. My phone interview with Oliver Reed didn’t go well — I tried not to rub him the wrong way but I said something about his character being a bit of a lazy sod. Things went downhill from there on.

Posted on 7.24.23: “If nothing else, Oppenheimer makes it unmistakably clear that Christopher Nolan should never, ever film a sex scene again. Or should never again, at the very least, shoot one with Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh. Within the confines of Nolan World, it’s all but impossible to believe that Oppie actually laid pipe.”

Originally posted on 7.9.08: Nothing destroys the allure of a presumably hot and happening restaurant more than common or crude behavior from the customers.

This lesson was impressed upon me very strongly about 25 years ago at an Italian restaurant on upper Columbus Avenue, not too far from the Museum of Natural History. It had just opened and been written about in a couple of publications, so I popped in one night for a quick one and to look at the menu. I eventually spoke to a waiter about this and that, and he pointed out that the owner was celebrating the opening of the place with a large group of friends and family. I looked over and there they were — 15 or so at a big table, raising glasses and being way too loud. They looked like New Jersey Italians.

I went downstairs to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands one of the owner’s friends or family members — a big tall guy with a moustache — came in and went straight for the urinal and loudly belched, loudly farted and took a leak at precisely the same instant. Boom-boom-bam! And then he went “aaahhhh!” like a grizzly bear having an orgasm. And then he snorted.

Now, I’m as human as the next guy and so I try not to look down my nose at people, but this guy, I decided then and there, was a total animal. And I said to myself, if the owner has beasts in his family or among his friends, then he too must be a belching and farting peon on some level, and this will come out in different ways in the running of his business, and sooner or later the restaurant will close. Probably sooner. I decided all this less than 30 seconds after the show in the bathroom.

Four to six months later, the place had indeed closed. I’m not making this up.

I hate saying this because it makes me sound a bit MAGA instead of the sensible left-centrist that I am, but I sorta kinda get the Trump administration being against all of those “white people bad” installations at the Smithsonian and other significant cultural museums.

I’m not suggesting that anyone should accept this whitehouse.gov page as gospel, but it highlights a rundown of various “white people are evil and need to be scolded if not diminished” installations at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Portrait Gallery and so on.

I kinda get all this because four years ago I was repelled by the Academy Museum’s unmistakable denigration of Alfred Hitchcock and North by Northwest in a Mount Rushmore exhibit that i saw in 2021. It was driven by the same basic woke mentality that is apparently manifesting in other museums today.

“Apology House“, posted on 10.9.21: The Academy Museum is a huge, four-story, super-expensive apology installation.

In room after room and in display after display, the museum says the following: “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is very, very sorry that white men ran the film industry for 100 years straight, and there are doubtless too many white men running things now, but at least things are changing now for the better — women, Black artists, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and other POCs are making significant inroads, and we the Academy are proudly standing beside them and doing what we can to give them more power and say-so.

“So again, please understand our profound sorrow about how Hollywood’s film industry was run between 1915 and 2015, but the Academy is helping to make things right. Onward, progressive soldiers!”

I was especially entertained by two apology statements that are mounted on walls next to the “Backdrop An Invisible Art” exhibit. It partially salutes the huge Mount Rushmore painting used in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (’59) but mostly condemns it, or at least condemns the U.S. government for betraying the Lakota by allowing Mount Rushmore to be carved into a mountain in virgin Lakota territory, and by association condemns North by Northwest.

You’re given the distinct idea that North by Northwest is kind of an evil film, and that it might be better if Hitchcock, Ernest Lehman, Cary Grant and others involved were to be cancelled posthumously.

Hitchcock’s terrible failure to respect the Lakota Sioux’s sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills) in South Dakota…this callous faux pas dogs his reputation to this very day. Because Hitch callously and obliviously staged the thrilling climax of North by Northwest atop the shamefully chiselled and misappropriated Mount Rushmore. Never forget that the British-born Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have cared less. Sic semper auteurists!

…why is “you wait” the one I remember the best?

Jerry Adler, who passed at age 96, played it straight and plain in every Sopranos scene he appeared in.

The bulk of Hesh’s fortune was built upon the backs of black r&b singers whom he unfairly exploited in the ’50s and ’60s. So he wasn’t a “nice guy”, but Hesh was Hesh was Hesh…the real McCoy.

Boilerplate: Hesh is a Jewish businessman who made his initial fortune in the recording industry, founding F-Note Records during the 1950s and 1960s, bringing many young black musicians to prominence, and receiving royalties by being fraudulently credited as a co-writer on many songs.

“Hesh is thought to be a composite character, inspired by real life music mogul Morris “Mo” Levy, the founder of Roulette Records who (a) had connections to the mafia, and (b) owned a string of racehorses.”

I’m very sorry but the tourist-friendly center of Copenhagen is much more attractive, serene, dreamy and gentle-vibey than…well, most cities in the States.  A little bit of Munich, a touch of Prague.  

It’s almost too chill here, in fact…too scenic, too storybook, too flooded with mellow. None or little of the noisy rough and tumble one associates with a vibrant city (although an anti-Israel demonstration is happening nearby as we speak).

The first thing I noticed as I exited the plane was the coolish early October weather. Rest assured Copenhagen is abundant with the usual peaked tile rooftops, cobblestoned streets, 19th Century architecture to die for, tens of thousands of healthy green trees, a typically magnificent metro system…everyone you speak to is gentle, open-hearted, at peace with the flow of things. Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles.

I haven’t slept much, of course (my SAS flight left JFK around 7:15 pm Saturday night), but I felt instantly charmed and am very happy to be here. Does that make me a schmuck, an easy lay, a pushover? So be it.

I always forget to take something important when I’m packing for a flight, and this time — yesterday — I forgot to take my basic daily meds. They are (a) Naproxen for achey leg muscles, (b) Atorvastatin for fighting cholestoral, and (c) Lisinopril for lowering blood pressure.

I discovered their absence after arriving yesterday afternoon in West Orange, New Jersey, and I really didn’t want to drive all the way back to Wilton to get them.

So late yesterday I asked a night nurse who works for my Wilton-based health provider, Nuvance, to approve sending prescriptions to a West Orange CVS. She did but due to complications the Naproxen was sent to a CVS in the northern part of town and the Atorvastatin and Lisinopril scripts were sent to another CVS about two miles south of it.

Today’s plan was to take a 2 pm train to Manhattan’s Penn Station, and then hop on the usual A train express to Howard Beach and JFK. But we were on a tight schedule due to Jett, Cait and Sutton deciding to hit a nearby swim club, and then we all ordered a quick bite in Montclair and then stopped by the northernmost CVS to pick up the Naproxen. So far, so good.

Then we swung by the house so I could grab my gear (one modest-sized suitcase plus my leather computer bag), and then Jett took me to the second CVS. We got there around 1:45 pm — 15 minutes before the train.

I hustled over to the pharmacy and noticed that the gate was halfway down. There was a pharmacist inside though. I said I have a script sitting in a paper bag but a 2 pm train was breathing down my neck, not to mention a subsequent flight to Europe, and could she possibly let me have the meds as it wouldn’t be much fuss? Her response: “I’m eating my lunch.” (In fact she was slurping her lunch, some kind of Pho with steamed vegetables.)

I whimpered and pretty-pleased two or three times in a gentle tone of voice, but she was adamant. I said not being able to grab the meds meant I’d have to cold-turkey it in Europe for over two weeks. Tough shit, she essentially replied. Then she picked up her styrofoam soup bowl and walked behind a counter so I couldn’t see her and vice versa, and continued slurping away.

I gave up and left. I’ll probably survive the absence of the meds but jeez, what a frosty pharmacist.

Update: It’s 6:25 pm, and my JFK flight to Copenhagen departs at 6:55 pm. Or so it says on the ticket.

When I first glimpsed an image of an overly muscled-up Dwayne Johnson in a black short-hair wig in Benny Safdie’s The Fighting Machine (A24, 10.3), I immediately tumbled head over heels into a pit of black depression.

Because as much as I respect and admire people who keep themselves in shape, I hate dude bods with swollen, gleaming, well-oiled muscles and bulging veins and whatnot, and especially the sports culture that celebrates this kind of aggressive brawn and pumped-up machismo.

Johnson, a competent actor as far as it goes, is playing former wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who peaked in the ‘90s and is now 57. God help me but I’ll have to watch this sure-to-be-bruising tribute film on the Lido.

Peter Yates’s’ Robbery opened stateside on 9.27.67: the San Francisco premiere of John Boorman’s Point Blank happened just over four weeks prior (8.30.67). Hard-boiled and then some.