A Criterion Bluray of Nicholas Ray‘s They Live By Night pops on 6.13. Based on Edward Anderson‘s Depression era novel “Thieves Like Us“, this 1948 classic launched the “kids on the run” sub-genre. Its influence was felt by Joseph H. Lewis‘s Gun Crazy (’50), Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty‘s Bonnie and Clyde (’67), Terrence Malick‘s Badlands (’73) and certainly in Robert Altman‘s Thieves Like Us (’74), which was also based on Anderson’s book. It was also Ray’s debut feature (shot in early ’47, released in August ’48). He soon gained respect as a strong, passionate helmer and his career chugged along for another 14 or 15 years, but drugs and alcohol gradually interfered more and more. Ray finally screwed the pooch when he collapsed on the set of 55 Days at Peking (’63).

Could a comedy-sketch show theoretically get away with doing a “Men on Books” routine in 2017? If a latter-day David Alan Grier and Damon Wayans, who ruled the nation when they did this on In Living Color between ’90 and ’93, were to try this on Saturday Night Live, they would be torn to shreds on Twitter. In a world in which Moonlight is the ultimate “oh, wow,” comedy routines like “Men on…” have to get the boot. The gap is too great; they can’t co-exist. All I know is that (a) I used to love In Living Color and (b) I sat in my seat like a stone-faced corpse as I watched Moonlight last September in Telluride.

I met Trae Crowder a while back when he visited Real Time with Bill Maher. He sounds like the grandson of the guy who fucked Ned Beatty in the ass in Deliverance, but he’s totally cool. If only there were a few more Southern guys like him — i.e., irreverent but amiable, nobody’s fool and willing to cut through the bullshit. Crowder’s co-authored book (with Corey Ryan Forrester), “The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark“, came out last October, and I wouldn’t mind reading it.

Southerners are good people if you can forget what they believe in. I had a great time when I visited Shreveport six or seven years ago. I visited a nifty little country bar, drank a lot, joked around with everyone and met a pretty lady who had just left her husband and was looking to ratify this decision by doing the nasty with the right guy, who turned out to be me.

What neighborhood? My guess is the Lower West Side, north of Canal. I’m sorry but Hollywood Elsewhere approves:

Hot on the heels of Jason Pollock‘s Stranger Fruit, a controversial doc about the 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson that premiered last weekend at South by Southwest, TheRoot.com‘s Michael Harriott has posted an even more inflammatory piece called “Everything You Think You Know About the Death of Mike Brown Is Wrong, and the Man Who Killed Him Admits It.”

The big assertion in Pollock’s doc is that a new security-cam video proves that Brown didn’t steal a box of cigarillos from a Ferguson liquor store before the 8.9.14 encounter with Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Brown following an altercation. Pollock’s conclusion is that minus the cigarillo element, Brown wasn’t a belligerent asshole thief but an amiable drug dealer who got caught in a racial crossfire.

But Harriott’s piece is a bigger bombshell, or at least it purports to be. It states that a court docket (i.e., an official summary of proceedings in a court of law) from a late-2014 civil suit proves that Wilson flat-out lied in his grand jury testimony about the incident.

Harriott excerpt: “New court papers reveal that Brown never tried to take the officer’s gun, never struck the officer and did not initiate any contact with Wilson, who was cleared of wrongdoing by a secret grand jury in November 2014.”

I spent 40 minutes this morning writing a response to Harriott’s article, and then sent it to a Brooklyn guy who had passed it along. I also copied it and sent a version to myself. There was no objectionable material in what I wrote, but both emails disappeared for some reason. On top of which the Brooklyn guy was unable to forward my original email back to my inbox. He finally captured the content in three PDF docs and sent them along…got it! Rather than re-type it, I’m posting the PDF images to save time:

Last week an HE tipster caught a research screening of George Clooney‘s Suburbicon at the Sherman Oaks Arclight, and he says it’s quite good — a dry Fargo-esque noir comedy set in ’50s suburbia. The stars are Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac and young Noah Jupe.

He’s actually calling it Clooney’s best-directed film ever…more bell-ringy than The Ides of March, Monuments Men, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Paramount will presumably release Suburbicon sometime this fall.

Put another way, this guy has seen four unreleased films over the past few weeks (the other three were Trey Edward Shults‘ It Comes At Night, Jason Reitman‘s Tully and Destin Daniel Cretton‘s The Glass Castle), and he says Suburbicon is the best of the lot.

Suburbicon star Julianne Moore, director George Clooney during shooting last fall.

Suburbicon was shot in the Los Angeles area last October and November.

Joel and Ethan Coen‘s mid ’80s script was reworked by Clooney and Grant Heslov — they all share an even-steven “written by” credit (presumably pre-WGA review).

The other film Suburbicon resembles besides Fargo, he says, is Martin McDonagh‘s unreleased Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Fox Searchlight, sometime in the fall).

I’ll skip over the plot particulars, but it involves deceit, murder and hired hitmen a la Fargo with a pinch or two of Double Indemnity. Speaking of that 1944 Billy Wilder film, Oscar Isaac, portraying an insurance investigator, has a great interrogation scene towards the end in the tradition of Edward G. Robinson‘s Barton Keyes character.

Suburbicon‘s hired bad guys are vaguely similar to Fargo‘s Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare — i.e., a skinny guy and a bruiser type.