…since I returned from Oslo (HE’s standard Cannes stopover) on Sunday, 5.24 at 4 pm or thereabouts. I’ve been curious about the recently restored 4K version of The Best Years of Our Lives (it was first screened at the Academy’s Ted Mann theatre last November), and seeing it the Paris (5th Avenue at 58th) would’ve been perfect. But I was so whipped from my Oslo-to=JFk flight I doubt I would’ve stayed awake.

I’ll soon be composing and posting my own N.Y. Times obit, knowing full well that my eventual passing will not be acknowledged by the judgmental, snobby-ass Times, despite my having written for their Arts & Entertainment section in the early ’90s and blah blah. This will be an enjoyable writing challenge, but I’ll have to give it some thought in order to lay it down right.

Accepted, agreed to: California Derangement Syndrome (CDS) is a political phrase coined by Governor Gavin Newsom and his administration. It describes an irrational, chronic obsession among political critics and conservative media outlets with portraying California as a failed, dystopian communist wasteland while ignoring measurable data to the contrary.

Without getting into the obviously bruising effect of Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer’s 6.4 N.Y. Times forensic report about the personal romantic history of Maine’s Graham Platner, the likely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate who is all but certain to run against Sen. Susan Collins, a non-MAGA Republican…

Without accepting or taking issue with the story’s allegations, I’d like to ask a simple question.

Who has been without sin or selfishness in their youthful or semi-youthful (20s and 30s) romantic life? Whose history hasn’t involved a certain degree of avoidance or sudden whimsy or callousness or occasional passive-aggressive ghosting?

Imagine if Gleuck or Lerer had devoted many weeks to exploring your past shortcomings or selfish behaviors or whatnot. Almost anyone’s imperfect life can be sliced and diced.

I’m certainly not saying that Platner, 41, has been an admirably behaved fellow, sexually speaking or one-on-one-relationship-wise, over the last 15 or so years. He hasn’t been a total animal by any measure, but he certainly has blemishes.

There have been reports, of course, that the younger Platner exhibited booze-impacted PTSD behavior, and has behaved like a hound and been unfaithful with this or that ex-girlfriend, and that he’s sexted certain women behind his wife’s back.

Intemperate sexual behavior is unbecoming, obviously, and quite stupid for anyone (man or woman) thinking of running for high office.

But this is mainly an issue for Platner’s wife to kick around. (She’s been supportive.) It should not be a central or even an important consideration when it comes to Maine’s Senatorial ballot, at least in any kind of fair-minded, real-deal world.

Reader responses to Gleuck and Lerer’s report:

“Which is fine. That’s who she is. But Bari’s definitely not trying to do more and more pieces that fluff Trump. She may be trying to inject a little more ‘fair and balanced’ into the 60 Minutes pieces here and there,. I’m sure that’s what Scott Pelley objected to. But that’s not [necessarily] a bad goal.”

Right now the general line of thinking among the vast majority of journalists, editors and columnists out there is that Weiss is some kind of right-leaning equivocator who is in fact invested in stories that won’t adhere to what can fairly be called a classic 60 Minutes mindset. This doesn’t strike me as particuarly insightful.

The chaotic earthquaking of 60 Minutes over the last three days obviously constitutes major high-stakes drama. The blistering confrontation that happened between 60 Minutes corespondent Scott Pelley (who’s been canned), the show’s recently-hired exec producer Nick Bilton and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is a much, much stronger scenario than the bellowing argument between CBS corporate and 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman…one of the scenes that make Michael Mann‘s The Insider such a classic. Obviously.

It follows, naturally, that there’s a major movie in this — a Mann film perhaps? — about the Pelley-Bilton-Weiss contretemps, and more broadly ablout the whole kowtowing-to-Trump, Paramount purchase of CBS and 60 Minutes and handing the reins to Weiss (i.e., David Ellison, son of Larry, last year took control of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, in a multibillion-dollar merger).

Love this passage from Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin’s 6.1.26 N.Y. Times story: “In an extraordinary exchange, Mr. Pelley, his newscaster’s baritone sometimes shaking in anger, told Nick Bilton, the new executive producer, that he had ‘slender’ qualifications for his new job and questioned the network’s commitment to the future of the program, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

“The 10 a.m. gathering, held at the program’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, was intended as a formal introduction to Mr. Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker who was appointed last week as part of a major shake-up at 60 Minutes. CBS fired Tanya Simon, the previous executive producer, and her deputy, along with Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, two of the show’s correspondents — an event that Mr. Pelley referred to as ‘Black Thursday.'”

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After last night’s AMC Danbury showing of Masters of the Universe (technically an earlybird thing as the film doesn’t open in AMC theatres until this afternoon), I drove right back to Wilton and filed my review. And now it’s up. Fast turnaround!

My poor math skills ensured that I would get Nicholas Galitzine‘s age wrong — he’s 32, not 22. I informed my editors of the error this morning; presumably they’ll be fixing it soon.

I also failed to include a pretty good kicker paragraph, although I sent it along 90 minutes ago. Here it is:

Possible omen:  There’s a big Castle Grayskull scene in the second act — a dramatic surge moment — in which Galitzine’s Adam finally abandons the uncertainty and becomes He-Man, wielding the Power Sword and affirming his destiny.  The AMC Danbury crowd came alive at this very moment…energy wave!…and at that moment I noticed, three rows in front of me, an actual Power Sword being raised in celebration.  Some guy cos-playing with a plastic, full-sized replica, probably bought 40 years ago in Toys ‘R’ Us, and pumping it in the air.  Go, He-Man!  Hilarious!

As I’ve been told I can share the New York Sun article and given the standard compression edits that always happen prior to publication, I thought I’d post the original HE version. Compare and evaluate.

“Honey, I Shrunk the Skeletor,” finished last night around 11:30 pm:

My thirtysomething sons, Jett and Dylan, were never into the Masters of the Universe Mattel universe…not yet born during the heyday.  And they never saw Gary Goddard’s Cannon-produced, nearly 40 year-old Masters of the Universe (’87)…still unborn, probably wouldn’t have cared if they had been.  And so I wasn’t parent-punished into buying the action figures or watching the kiddie cartoon serial.

But I was a Cannon Studios employee when Goddard’s film was being shot at Culver Studios in the early fall of ’86, and I damn well visited the massive Castle Grayskull set, you bet…a lavish undertaking which ate up two full sound stages.  My eyes and heart were sorta kinda dazzled as I strolled around with the unit publicist, muttering wisecracks and  wondering why the place felt so quiet.

Because it was empty, that’s why.  So no casual run-ins with a bare-chested, sword-bearing, heavily-costumed Dolph Lundgren (He-Man) or a dark-cloaked, masked-up Frank Langella (Skeletor).  And yet the film hadn’t wrapped so where was everyone?  

I knew that the financially squeezed Cannon had been forced to lose several script pages and things were being re-strategized.  Perhaps some of the battle sequences were being shot in and around SoCal instead of on the fantasy planet of Eternia.  

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the sound-stage vibe felt a bit off.  Hesitant, uncertain…who knew?

I dragged myself to a screening when MOTU opened on 8.7.87, and I knew right away I couldn’t be fully honest with any of my fellow Cannon-ites. Because it obviously blew chunks.  It was critically savaged, became a box-office bomb.  ($22 million to produce, $17.3 million earned).  The tone was half-jape, half-solemn.  Lundgren struggled with his dialogue but Langella seemed to enjoy the scenery-chewing.   Courteney Cox, James Tolkan and Meg Foster costarring…whatevs.

Now there’s a brand-new Masters of the Universe from Amazon and director Travis Knight (Bumblebee)…thinner, slighter and much more expensive. Between $170M and $200M. 

So why remake an ‘80s stinker, and particularly one that feels out of synch with the here-and-now?  We’re living in an era of hit indie strange-os (Obsession, Weapons, Backrooms). IP sequels aren’t what they used to be in the teens, and nobody cares about MOTU merch…long gone.  Mattel obviously connected with Barbie, sure, but that was a misandrist, pinker-than-pink, auteur-driven one-off.

So why watch this thing, I asked myself?    Why submit to punishment?  Because a movie journo has to occasionally man up and take the pain.  And that was my attitude as I slipped into a special early-bird screening at the AMC Danbury.

Guess what?  Knight’s newbie is a feck-it movie, a mild breeze…good-natured, light-hearted and completely divorced from any notion of dramatic engagement.  Every line and every scene delivers a jack-off vibe.  It’s got that good old “nothing matters, it’s all a goof so forget the story and let’s just have fun” attitude…a Guardian of the Galaxy thing, only a wee bit lighter, a touch more throwaway.

I didn’t care about the story or anybody or anything, and that was fine.  Because it didn’t irritate me or tick me off.  This film doesn’t fly — it glides.  I was sitting in a convertible with the top down and a cold beer in my hand, and I don’t even drink.  (Sober since March of 2012.)

And guess what?  32 year-old Nicholas Galitzine, as Adam Glenn and He-Man  — the former an easygoing, blonde-haired, earth-residing dude who wears black jeans, a pink Brooks Brothers shirt and whitesides but doesn’t want to get sucked into a mediocre life as an HR guy, and the latter character the former Prince of Eternia who lives to wield the mythical Power Sword…Galitzine is a slam-dunk star in this thing, at least during the first half to two-thirds.  (I succumbed to slight boredom during the last third.) 

Galitzine is certainly ten times the actor that Dolf Lundgren** was in the ’87 version.  Having bulked himself up for this role, Galitzine is relaxed and unassuming and always conveying an intelligent vibe.  I liked him immediately because he’s always settling things down, always letting you know this this big, carefree Amazon film is into chilling, bruh, even during the violent battle scenes…shoulder-shrugging, mellow-vibing….no worries because it’s all meaningless bullshit.

Deep down this movie is total helium…a stone that doesn’t skim across a pond as much as levitate above it.  Compared to it Guardians of the Galaxy feels like Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, and The Empire Strikes Back plays like Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

I don’t know if Masters of the Universe is going to tank or succeed, but if I, a grumpy hater of empty-brain-pan CG-driven popcorn cinema, can make peace with it then maybe others can too.  And I’m speaking as someone who hated Chris Pine’s Dungeons and Dragons.

Possible omen:  There’s a big Castle Grayskull scene in the second act — a dramatic surge moment — in which Galitzine’s Adam finally abandons the uncertainty and becomes He-Man, wielding the Power Sword and affirming his destiny.  The AMC Danbury crowd came alive at this very moment…energy wave!…and at that moment I noticed, three rows in front of me, an actual Power Sword being raised in celebration.  Some guy cos-playing with a plastic, full-sized replica, probably bought 40 years ago in Toys ‘R’ Us, and pumping it in the air.  Go, He-Man!  Hilarious!

All hail Jared Leto as Skeletor, a skull-faced, buff-bod, baddy-waddy who delivers (you guessed it!) a put-on, jizz-whiz performance.  Ditto Camila Mendes as Teela, a foxy, no-nonsense warrior (a butchier Princess Leia); Idris Elba as Duncan / Man-at-Arms, a recovering alcoholic superhero who mans up when the going gets tough; Allison Brie as Evil-Lyn, a brittle-ironic suck-up worshipper of Skeletor; Kristen Wiig as the voice of Robot; and, last but not least, Morena Baccarin as “the Sorceress”.  (Except Baccarin is a much better actress than this pan-flash character allows her to be — I loved her in Phillip Noyce’s Fast Charlie.)   

** Lundgren cameos during the first half-hour or so, and does a good job of it.

…in order to bang out a review for the New York Sun, which I did upon returning at 10 pm.

Author and screenwriter Ed Naha recently shared (via Facebook) an abbreviated rundown of draining medical issues. Nothing horrible but dreary and gloom-instilling, he wrote.

I’m sorry for Naha’s mild misfortunes, but — this is going to sound perverse and perhaps even cruel — they triggered a certain alpha-karma payback response. A subtle feeling of satisfaction even.

Rather than try to explain my admittedly odd reaction, please read Naha’s post and then an 11.14.12 HE post titled “Happiness Pills.”

Nobody seems to speak with much reverence these days about Mervyn LeRoy, mainly because his rep isn’t much different than Clarence Brown‘s — a reliable, well-respected house director.

But LeRoy helmed a fair amount of first-rate films during the heyday (early 30s to late 50s), plus Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (11.15.44) is arguably Hollywood’s most rousing WWII propaganda flick. Great cast (Van Johnson, Spencer Tracy, Robert Walker), a first-rate Dalton Trumbo script, fine cinematography by Robert Surtees and Harold Rosson.

I can only report that this 16-minute clip hooked me. Everything stopped. I had to stay with it.

10 pm update: I’ve just rewatched the first 60 minutes, which felt overly sentimental, unsubtle, mawkish. I know the film picks up once the Ruptured Duck heads for Japan.

Posted early Tuesday by HE commenter “roland1824”: “Obsession is whatever. The more interesting story here is how the hype has reached a self-perpetuating velocity that built on itself exponentially. There’s a feeling of Obsession FOMO…that this is some kind of cultural moment that people must partake in. I suspect there was some early bot seeding online to launch it before your loud easy-lay horror fans took over. The low-budget narrative is something that has been drilled into heads — you had to see it (has anyone mapped out how union minimums break down $750k?)”

Anonymously written Bluray.com review, posted about 10 days ago: “Criterion’s 4K restoration of Lawrence Kasdan‘s Body Heat is a massive upgrade in quality, whether seen in native 4K or 1080p.

“The improvements in delineation, clarity, depth, and especially the dynamic range of the visuals, are humongous. On a large screen, viewing the new 4K restoration and the old 1080p presentation is a night-and-day experience. Color reproduction and balance are outstanding.

“All primaries and supporting nuances are properly set, and there are absolutely no traces of the awful tealing that destroyed the recent 4K restorations of big films like Point Blank and Night Moves.

“Unsurprisingly, Criterion’s Body Heat now has a spectacular, very faithful, very attractive period appearance. The Dolby Vision grade helps some of the most gorgeous visuals look even better. I was particularly impressed by the opening sequence because the different nighttime colors looked tremendous. The darkest areas looked good on my system, too.

“The 1080p presentation also produces stunning colors, which is one of several reasons why the new 4K restoration and the previous 1080p presentation produce visuals with very different dynamic ranges. The entire film is spotless.”

Emphasis: The Criterion Bluray situation has gotten so bad in terms of teal-tint vandalism (the most grievous offenders being Eyes Wide Shut, Sorcerer, Night Moves and Point Blank) that when they DON’T ruin a film’s original color scheme. It’s cause for celebration.

I still think that the Criterion should be prosecuted in The Hague. There is nothing more EVIL in the realm of Bluray remastering than to saturate an original color scheme with teal poisoning. These diabolical fiends should be brought before The Hague judges in chains. I’m dead serious.