To fix HE’s Sony 4K sound-synch problem all I have to do is buy and apply the following items: (1) Catchin’ Synch, a sound-synch testing app that can be installed on any half-decent audio-visual receiver ($14), (2) a Marantz NR15065 Audio/Video Surround Receiver with Bluetooth and Wifi ($500) and (3) an Oppo BDP-103 player, which allows the viewer to adjust sound-synch issues backward or forward ($500). Never in my life have I been fleeced like this, and the nightmare isn’t even over. I’m in hell.

I hope to never again hear of Orson Welles‘ The Other Side Of The Wind. Nor will I ever again speak of Filip Jan Rymsza or Oja Kodar or Sasha Welles or anyone else involved in this infuriating, godforsaken project. Okay, I’ll discuss/mention Peter Bogdanovich or Frank Marshall or any other peripheral players who have distinguished themselves in some other realm but the movie, which has never existed in any kind of coherent, showable, arresting form and may never in fact attain that condition, no longer exists for me.

If The Other Side Of The Wind ever appears on streaming or Bluray or in theatres I will strenuously ignore it. I’m sick of it. I’m off the boat. If anyone comes up to me and says “I will give you a thousand tax-free dollars if you’ll just sit down and watch The Other Side of The Wind,” I will look them straight in the eye like Ted Cruz does when he’s talking to TV reporters, smile, gently place my hand on their shoulder and politely refuse.

I donated $100 of my hard-earned money to help get this scattered, disjointed mess of a would-be film restored and assembled but that was then and this is now. I’ve washed my hands of it, and I’m urging everyone else to think about making a similar pledge. All together now, “To hell with The Other Side Of The Wind!

I’m all tapped out as a result of another horrible day in which I’ve tried to solve the myriad 4K sound-synch problems as far as the Oppo BD-93 Bluray and 4K Roku apps are concerned and more particularly have suffered yet another Direct TV technician miscommunication. I’m in the deepest and hottest cavern of hell right now, but I have to least say that Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation is one of the creepiest and most bizarrely chilling yuppie dinner party flicks of my lifetime. It’s not just a thriller but a conveyer of seriously demonic vibes. All my life I’ve secretly hated guys who smile as they raise wine glasses at parties and talk about how everyone should enjoy themselves as they celebrate their good fortune, and The Invitation reacquainted me with that. People who try to instruct you how to feel or who urge you to feel a certain way about this or that are, I’ve found, generally evil. That’s all I’ll say in this context. No specifics, no plot elements, no hints — they’ll only get in the way. Just see The Invitation any way you can this weekend (it’s viewable on Amazon and iTunes as well as select theatres) before the word gets out. I’m telling you it’s a stand-out. It’s also shot to the top of my Best of ’16 list. I’m so burnt from today’s head-pounding misfortunes that I’m quitting for the day and going on a long walk to flush my head out. But see this film.

Following last night’s Arclight screening of Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation, Kusama sat for a q & a with actress Kathryn Hahn.

We’ve all felt susceptible to certain dubious filmmakers, actors or genres. Movies that aren’t good for you and will only stunt your growth, but you watch them anyway. For some people it’s mid ’40s to mid ’50s big-studio musicals. For others it’s Asian martial-arts cinema. Some have a thing for lavishly made, large-format period-spectacle flicks (Quo Vadis to The Fall of the Roman Empire). For guys like Quentin Tarantino it’s ’70s grindhouse flicks with a special nod to blacksploitation. My Bluray weaknesses are for (a) film noir and (b) pre-1970 films that have almost no grain like Criterion’s Sweet Smell of Success (or which have been tastefully DNR’ed a la Universal’s Psycho and Cape Fear) and have been mastered at 1.66:1. I’ll buy almost (I say “almost)) any Bluray that fits those criteria regardless of quality. What other bad habits have you in their grip?

Recapping: Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Demolition (Fox Searchlight, 4.8) “is about a youngish, day-dreamy investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal) succumbing to all kinds of weird, self-absorbed behavior as a way of dealing with his wife’s car-crash death. He doesn’t grieve as much go inward. He ignores his job, grows a stubble beard, becomes enamored of fixing machinery and then tearing things down.

“In so doing he begin to increasingly mystify and then piss off his father-in-law (Chris Cooper). He also slides into a nonsexual but connected relationship with a customer service rep (Naomi Watts) for a vending machine company. She has a somewhat alienated son (Judah Lewis) and a big, suspicious, more-than-a-little-angry live-in boyfriend.

“A lot of stuff gets taken apart and trashed and sledge-hammered in a kind of acted-out, fuck-it-all, let-it-fall-down way, but there’s one demolition scene that really didn’t go down very well with me, and which prompted some in the audience to groan and cry out.

“It happens when Gyllenhaal and Lewis completely wreck everything in his super-expensive home in the New York-area suburbs — furniture, walls, kitchen, music system, 70” flatscreen. “What kind of shit is this?,” I said to the screen. ‘Who wrecks a house like this? If Jake does’t want to live there, sublet it or sell it or whatever. But don’t destroy a perfectly nice house for some petty emotional reason…fuck is wrong with you, man?’