Early last evening I walked into a nearby Walmart and bought the new 4K Ben-Hur 3-disc package. 15 minutes later I popped disc #1 into HE’s 4K Sony Bluray player, and right away I was going “whoa…this looks significantly better than my 2011 Ben-Hur Bluray”…my eyeballs were going boooiinngggg!

Seriously, this puppy is truly exceptional…the details are dazzling…this kind of bump is what 4K should always deliver…the red tunics of the Roman legions are so radiant you might feel a slight urge to wear sunglasses…you can really savor the fabric threads…Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting looks like it’s been painted upon actual plaster…the sparkling eye colors and moist, lived-in skins of men amd women of all ages…the flickering green of olive tree leaves…the gleaming gold-accented chest armor…the chiselled hair patterns of that crouching, giant-sized discus-thrower in the center of the chariot stadium…the exquisite, vibrantly-colored fabrics and robes…all of it. Every shot fills the milk pitcher of your soul.

For the first time in my life I noticed that the late Stephen Boyd (aka Messala) had oversized, oddly-shaped big toes…plus you can see the makeup strokes of Hugh Griffith‘s overly dark, painted-on Arab face more clearly…the blacks are mine-shaft deep, velvety and super-smooth…and while you can see a very fine layer of grain if you put your nose right up to the screen, it’s really almost nonexistent. The 4K Ben-Hur is almost like watching the live Cinecitta sets and actors through a just-cleaned window. I was half-chuckling at this, musing that the grain monks — those fanatical asshats who love heightened, extra-visible grain in Blurays of older films…the grain monks might be upset by this…”too smooth and clean!”

And then 20 minutes into disc #1, it froze….”I just bought this!“, I shouted. I hit eject, popped in my lens-cleaning disc, wiped the newbie clean and started over. It was fine after that but c’mon…20 minutes into your first viewing of a brand new 4K disc and it quits?

I still lose interest after the chariot race sequence ends. The air goes out of the balloon, and it becomes tedious. All of that endless suffering of Martha Scott and Cathy O’Donnell in the Valley of the Lepers…”you mustn’t look upon us, Judah!”…relax already! Okay, you’ve got some ugly warts on your face, but you’re still relatively healthy and able to get around….why not just accept the4 disease and move on and do what you can? Hiding in a cave?…later.

Okay, Robert Surtees‘ tracking camera work during the final two or three minutes is impressive.

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Today is Wednesday, 2.18. Roughly two weeks ago (okay, possibly in very late January) I bought a half-gallon of milk. The expiration date was for 3.12 or thereabouts, so I figured I had at least three weeks of use without concern.

By late last week (2.11) it had turned slightly putrid, which is what milk does before changing into cottage cheese. Even if I had discounted the 3.12 sell-by date and went instead with a March 1st “drink it or lose it” deadline, I was still getting screwed.

AI sez that “properly refrigerated pasteurized milk typically lasts 5 to 7 days past its ‘sell-by’ date”…nope.

Whatever the sell-by date is, subtract 30 days…that’s the lesson.

While visiting a friend’s upstate New York farm in the ’90s, I was given a tall glass of chilled, farm-fresh, right-out-of-the-cow milk. I’ve never forgotten that wonderful taste, that wholesome feeling of slurping the real thing. I also ate some freshly-slaughtered pig sausage that weekend. I can’t even think about killing an animal for any reason, but it was beyond delicious.

Woody Allen‘s Deconstructing Harry opened on 12.12.97, or nearly 30 years ago. I happened upon this clip early this morning, loving it but without the slightest recollection of having seen it way back when. Harry isn’t a stinker, of course, but it never wound me up. The reason it’s not spoken about much, I gather, is because of the abrasive and sourpuss tone throughout much of the running time…right? Rediscovering something good is such a pleasure. Even in a minor or second-gear mode, Woody was always inventive.

TMZ has posted a post-fight video of Shia LaBeouf outside a French Quarter bar…it’s Mardi Gras time…Shia got into a scrap over something-or-other… paramedics, cops, cuffs, jail. The fight happened two nights ago (technically Tuesday AM).

When John Ford included a fist fight between John Wayne and Lee Marvin in Donovan’s Reef (’63), he was pitching a certain affectionate vibe…drunken combat between charismatic movie stars was a “dudes will be dudes”-type deal. That’s how we all process it…good rowdy roughhouse. But when boozy fisticuffs happen in real life, it’s ugly or at least pathetic.

LeBeouf, 39, is probably going to pass from this realm at a relatively early stage. Between the ages of 55 and 60, I’m guessing. Richard Burton was only 59 when he passed on in ’84, and John Barrymore was 60, which, given his relentless carousing, he wasn’t expected to reach. This isn’t to say that all the big showbiz drinkers have left early. Richard Harris died at age 72 in ’02…not bad. And let it never be forgotten that Peter O’Toole, a legendary boozer on both sides of the Atlantic, lived to the ripe old age of 81.

It seems curious that LaBeouf, who was playing young buck roles 10 or 15 years ago, is now almost completely gray-haired. He’s not even 40.

@crazzzyaz #shialabeouf #mardigras #neworleans ♬ Cycle Syncing Frequency – Still Haven

…because my patience is at an absolute end.

I’m persuaded that a Los Angeles-residing friend came up with the above goof line — a riff on Robert Duvall‘s actual Mastercard slogan, “I choose it because I use it.” I could be wrong, of course, but for the last four decades I’ve associated that “abuse it” line with Duvall, and it’s always made me chuckle a bit. Yesterday I called the guy who may have come up with the joke line during the Reagan administration, and he said he didn’t recall doing so. WHAT?

All hail the life, deeds, eloquent rhetoric and cherished memories of Jesse Jackson, the once-incandescent black spokesperson and social-justice firebrand who made his name as an activist (Rainbow PUSH Coalition), politician and ordained Baptist minister.

Jackson was as much of a superstar-of-color during the mid-to-late 20th Century as Barack Obama was in the 21st Century.

He peaked from the mid ’60s until his extra-powerful 1984 and slightly less riveting 1988 presidential campaigns. He continued to symbolically matter into the ’90s and aughts.

Jackson was there at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis when Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered. He was a super-influential earth-mover and power broker during the 1972 Democratic Convention in ’72. He famously wept in Chicago when Barack Obama was elected 11.4.08. The 1984 “hymietown” remark probably killed his presidential aspirations, but he never stopped being a leading civil rights torch-bearer of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Not to mention his Saturday Night Live visits.

Jackson disappointed me personally by not standing up against woke fanaticism during the terror (2017 to 2024), but since “woke” began as a BlackLivesMatter thing he probably felt that he couldn’t divest himself.

Jackson, Robert Duvall, Frederick Wiseman…legends are suddenly dropping like flies.

Will ya look at the McCartney-eluding or anti-McCartney argument in those Mescal eyes? That jaw? That hawknose? A 30something failing to align with a 20something spirit.