Here’s to Theodore Bikel, a burly Austrian-Jewish character actor with a large heart and probing mind. By my criteria he nailed it in at least two films — as a World War I-era German Naval lieutenant in John Huston‘s The African Queen (’51), and as a laid-back, good old boy Sheriff chasin’ after Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in Stanley Kramer‘s The Defiant Ones (’58). I never met him but Bikel was a fellow Wiltonian who used to have a sizable place on Honey Hill Road. An earthy fellow, good humored, married four times. He passed yesterday at age 91.

Bikel started out as an actor but then got into the ethnic folk music thing in the’50s, and he was right there at the ’65 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went electric [see video above]. In folk music circles Bikel was regarded as an old guard lefty and even a bit of a conservative by mid’ 60s standards…union guy, the “Wobblies“, a baggy-pants roustabout, part of the Alan Lomax realm. But he and Peter Yarrow were cool with Dylan after the booing started, both suggesting that he go back out and do an acoustic set. (And he did.)

Judd Apatow‘s Bill Cosby impression runs from 2:35 to 3:55. ‘Nuff said.

Why did Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart agree to costar in an obviously low-rent, less-than-inspired exploitation film that borrows from the old Long Kiss Goodnight and Bourne Identity formula (i.e., trained government agent with apparent amnesia, living in relative obscurity, suddenly having to evade attempts by agency to kill him)? Did they need the money or something? A film like this lowers the value of their respective brands and that’s all. With admired performances in Camp X-Ray, Clouds of Sils Maria and Still Alice, Stewart has finally established herself as a formidable thesp…and now she’s plotzing. Eisenberg has already made a few brazenly commercial flicks (Now You See Me, the forthcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and is committed to Now You See Me: The Second Act. Plus he’s been expanding upon his sensitive-OCD-guy chops with The End of the Tour and Louder Than Bombs. I understand acting in semi-cool commercial flicks like Adventureland and Zombieland but not something like this, which is obviously shit.

From John DeFore‘s 1.23.15 Hollywood Reporter review: “A strong if only occasionally transporting biography of a movement that terrified the establishment in its day, Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (PBS Distribution, 9.2 in NYC) speaks to many former members of the Black Panther Party about what its breed of revolutionary activism felt like at the time. Straight history is not the whole point here, as Nelson enthusiastically conjures a sense of what it felt like to be a Panther and to be a young black person inspired by them.”

Felicia and Leonard Bernstein and their guest of honor, Black Panther “field marshal” Donald Cox, during a fundraiser held at Bernstein’s Park Ave. apartment. The event was famously written about in Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s.”

The film does not overlook various examples of “present-day relevance,” DeFore notes.

“We’re introduced to the young Huey P. Newton, who realized that it was legal to carry loaded guns in public and understood that doing so in the vicinity of police interacting with Oakland’s black population would draw more attention to racial justice issues than a million printed fliers. He and Bobby Seale organized the party, which began with a focus on militancy but soon launched major charitable programs, including a famous free-breakfast effort that fed children 20,000 meals a week.

“While he shows the power of the ‘Free Huey’ slogan, Nelson isn’t eager to investigate it; he tells us almost nothing about the incident that led to Newton’s imprisonment (he was accused of killing a policeman), nor does he give us any way of guessing whether it was just or unjust.

Update: Earlier this evening I read a 9.18 interview with Alejandro G. Inarritu in Imagen, a Mexican film magazine, that seemed to contradict information I was recently given about Inarritu’s The Revenant not expected to be finished “until December” because there’s “a lot more work to be done.” This was because the article states that the film is “90% complete” except for the ending, as Inarritu likes to shoot in sequence. The article also reports (and I’ve independently confirmed with Inarritu) that the finale will be filmed over a four-day period later this month (and possibly into early August) in Ushuaia, Argentina. AGI leaves this coming Sunday, or on 7.26. This indicated to me at least that the film might be screenable before December, but Inarritu says no. He re-affirmed the 12.25 release date and said he is “still editing and in full post-production until then. Not finished at all.”

The Revenant began shooting in October 2014 in areas near Calgary, Alberta, as well as in British Columbia. The Wiki page says principal photography was originally scheduled to end in March although Inarritu subsequently stated that production would last “until the end of April or [into] May.” However a sudden heat wave melted the Alberta snow and forced Team Revenant to quit before they could finish. 

It is now winter in Ushuaia, a resort town on Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego archipelago — the southernmost tip of South America known as “the end of the world.” Current Ushuaia temperatures are averaging in the 30s so finding snow shouldn’t be a problem.

The Imagen article, digitally translated into crude English from the original Spanish, states that “in two weeks” Inarritu, dp Emmanuel Lubezki, presumably Leonardo DiCaprio along with other cast members and a crew will fly to Ushuaia to shoot the final scene or sequence, which will take roughly four days, as noted.  “It’s frightening what global warming is doing,” Inarritu tells the magazine. “The other thing is that it’s crazy…I’m editing and yet I have yet to shoot the final scene, but I have no choice. I need snow in summer and the only place I can find that is now is in Patagonia.” (Thanks to HE reader “Alvy Singer/Songwriter” for the link.)

Does “90% complete” mean that the film is more or less cut into some kind of coherent shape except for the yet-to-be-filmed finale? One would presume so. The normal pattern these days is to begin editing on films as soon as shooting begins, and The Revenant, as noted, has been shooting since last fall.  

“I saw this film as an opportunity to explore the possibilities and reasons for what keeps us striving to live when you have lost everything,” Inarritu tells Imagen. “When I talk about losing everything I also mean health, hope or emotional relationships. So what do we have? Why do we continue?”

It was reported earlier today that Gawker Media exec editor Tommy Craggs and Gawker.com editor-in-chief Max Read have resigned after honcho Nick Denton removed a slimey post about a New York media executive’s attempt to book a male prostitute and a blackmail attempt that followed. Craggs and Read felt that Denton had violated a firewall between management and editorial, and that they needed to resign for the cause of editorial independence and journalistic honor. How about this? How about nobody ever reports anything about anybody’s sex life unless something truly cruel and criminal has taken place (as in the case of Bill Cosby‘s decades-long pathology)? How about rolling it back to the days of JFK when journalists just left that shit alone? As an exercise, I mean. Give it a whirl, see how it feels.

Tab at Balthazar that Craggs charged to Gawker Media before resigning. (Pic originally posted by Mashable.) A 33% tip? I’m more of a 20% tipper unless the music is too loud and management won’t turn it down, in which case the waiter gets 5%.

I chose not to see Before We Go last September in Toronto, but I’ve no bone to pick with congenial romantic two-handers as a rule. Especially with Chris Evans (who also directed) and Alice Eve as the leads. I might even fork over the $22.99 it’ll cost to see as high-def version on Vudu starting tomorrow. But my first thought as I watched the trailer was “what if the jowly guy sitting behind Amy Schumer in that Trainwreck bar was the guy with the guitar offering to help Eve find a place to crash?” Because that would be a tad more realistic. I just don’t believe that husky beardos who look like Evans would be playing trumpet for spare change in Grand Central Station.

From David Rooney‘s Hollywood Reporter review, posted from Toronto on 9.12.14: “If you’re going to make an ultra-naturalistic, two-character, walking-and-talking romance that tips its hat to Before Sunrise, then it’s best to avoid a script loaded with contrived situations and overwritten dialogue. That’s the obstacle that hobbles Before We Go, Chris Evans’ wispy directing debut, almost from the start. Bland characters don’t help much either.

In the annals of longform cable scriptwriting there’s nothing so loathsome as killing a character off and then saying “Well, maybe he’ll return somehow.” If you decide not to kill a character, fine, but once you’ve done it, stick to it. Fudging around because the fans don’t like it is pathetic — an admission that you have no integrity, no backbone. If the fans want the character restored to life, you need to post on the show’s website or Facebook page, “I get it, I’m sorry, I know how you feel. But the ship has sailed and he’s fucking dead. On top of which he was too short to begin with.”

Here’s my method for watching season #2 of True Detective, which has worked pretty well so far. (1) Watch latest episode on Sunday evening — absorb some of it while multi-tasking, get distracted, play with cats, write emails, surf Twitter on iPhone 6 Plus, keep watching sporadically, try to discern some of the dialogue. (2) Re-watch latest episode via HBO Go, but this time with headphones — it’s during this key second viewing that I watch and listen really carefully, and yet each week I still miss two or three of the plot points. (3) Go to Wikipedia’s True Detective season #2 plot summary page, and read summary of latest episode twice, take mental notes, do searches for this or that character (who’s Vera again? Vince Vaughn will be okay if he can get his hands on a certain hard drive?), re-read it a third time. (4) Go back to HBO Go and watch latest episode a third time. (5) Read five or six negative web reviews (which naturally include plot summaries — they sometimes reveal a stray thread or two that Wikipedia has missed). The more negative, the better. Like this one, for example, by Business Insider‘s Joshua Rivera. I’m staying with the show until the end, of course, particularly given the much-written-about, Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy scene that may happen next weekend. I’ll tell you this much — if it weren’t for the option to endlessly re-watch episodes and study the plot summaries and whatnot, I would be totally lost at sea. I have a fairly comprehensive idea of what’s been going on so far, but I don’t care all that much. Nobody does. Nobody likes this show but they’re watching it anyway.

In my 7.14 Telluride spitball piece, I naively wished for an appearance of Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant. And then last Friday’s debut of the first Revenant teaser got everyone excited. But the down-to-earth reality is that The Revenant (20th Century Fox, 12.25) will not be in Venice, Telluride or Toronto.  I’m actually told it won’t be finished until December, but I doubt that.  It’s certainly not a good idea if Inarritu and 20th Century Fox want The Revenant to be a serious Best Picture finalist.

The Sasha Stone rule is that Best Picture contenders must be seen by October…at least. Every Best Picture winner over the last decade has either been festival-screened or theatrically released before 11.1. Birdman (first screened at Venice/Telluride), 12 Years A Slave (Telluride), Argo (Telluride), The Artist (Cannes, Telluride), The King’s Speech (Telluride), The Hurt Locker (a 6.26.09 release that premiered at Venice/Toronto in ’08), Slumdog Millionaire (Telluride, commercially opened in November ’08), No Country for Old Men (Cannes in May ’07), The Departed (opened on 10.6.06), Crash (opened in May 2005). Million Dollar Baby (opened on 12.15.04, began to be screened shortly before that) was the last Best Picture winner that popped in December.

Colin Farrell‘s True Detective character, Vinci detective Ray Velcoro, has delivered another shocker. At the end of episode #2 he was shotgunned twice and presumed dead…nope. Now, in episode #4, he’s suddenly shaved off his Russian revolution-meets-Emiliano Zapata moustache, shortened his hair, slicked it back some and has seemingly dropped five or ten pounds. He began the series looking like a total wreck, like a self-destructive, alcoholic assassin for Josef Stalin, the bad seed brother of Leon Trotsky with a dad bod — now he looks semi-civilized, clear of mind, almost redeemed. Like a West Hollywood guy who visits 24 Hour Fitness two or three times weekly. Why the sudden makeover? Did last week’s shootout shake Velcoro to the core, make him reconsider everything?

(l.) old, louche, fucked-up-looking Ray Velcoro; (r.) new, almost-GQ-redeemed Velcoro.