Nice jacket, Charlie. Looks warm. I think I saw it in Barney’s last December. Obviously not in keeping with apparel commonly worn by Arthur and his mates, but Guy Ritchie is reimagining that period…tossing the salad. Which goes hand in hand with the Led Zeppelin tracks. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Warner Bros., 5.12) will screen next week in New York and Los Angeles (and perhaps elsewhere) for people on my level.
In a just-posted interview with GQ‘s Michael Paterniti, Brad Pitt announces that he’s turned away from booze and (I think) pot, which Pitt legendarily inhaled for 25-plus years. The interview is like an AA confession. Clean and sober, a new life…for now. Pitt calls it a “season” that he has to “run off a cliff,” but good for him anyway. I knew six days in (my sobriety began on 3.20.12) that I’d be clean for life, but we all follow our peculiar paths.
Pitt: “I do remember a few spots along the road where I’ve become absolutely tired of myself. And this is a big one. These moments have always been a huge generator for change. And I’m quite grateful for it.”
HE Overview: Everybody drinks and parties for 20, 25 years. From their late teens to their early to mid 40s. But you can’t keep that shit up. Cut back, dial it down, embrace sobriety…whatever. But if you don’t rethink it or downshift to some extent, you’re likely to be in some kind of trouble by your early 50s. I speak from experience.
Pitt: “I can’t remember a day since I got out of college when I wasn’t boozing or had a spliff, or something. Something. And you realize that a lot of it is, uhm…cigarettes, you know, pacifiers. And I’m running from feelings. I’m really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family. But even this last year, you know…things I wasn’t dealing with. I was boozing too much. It’s just become a problem.
The redesigned Hollywood Elsewhere, which may pop later today or tomorrow, has a wider column width than the classic version. HE classic photos were 460 pixels wide; the new HE will features photos that are 640 pixels wide. Which is no biggie as far as future posts are concerned, but every jpeg photo in every previous post (August 2004 to May 2017) is going to be sitting flush left with a big dumb white space sitting to the right. All notions of eye-pleasing balance will be out the window.
I can’t resize 13 years worth of photos but I’d to at least try to figure out if I can center them within the new wider (640 pixel) posts. The flush left thing is AWFUL. I’m told that a solution may be found in WordPress, that I can make “sweeping changes” to the style template I’ve been using. “But if you enter them manually those sizes are set by you,” I’ve been warned. “And they remain set by you.”
I don’t want to fuck with WordPress settings — I’m too much of a klutz. Which basically means that I’m fucked, or at least that the solution to this too-small, flush-left problem is unknown as we speak.
Posted from Cinemacon on 3.28.17, in response to footage from Nikolaj Arcel, Stephen King and Akiva Goldsman‘s The Dark Tower (Columbia, 8.4): “This is seemingly another simplistic, CG-driven dreamscape action fantasy…more big-delivery jizz-whizz with Idris Elba as the heroic, gun-blasting Roland Deschain, Matthew McConaughey as bad-guy sorcerer Walter Padick and Tom Taylor as an 11 year-old kid who bonds with Deschain as they face various dangers…zzzzz. Same old tune, same old yarn, same blighted-landscape mythology.
The Dark Tower is based on an eight-book Stephen King series that began in 1982. It also feels deja vu-ish as a motherfucker, and for good reason. It’s another name for Barad-dur, the fortress of Suaron in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s the title of a 1987 horror flick starring Jenny Agutter. It’s the name of an early ’80s board game. Ditto a 1943 British thriller starring Herbert Lom.
Which is probably why, sight unseen and no offense, I feel all Dark Tower-ed out.
GRAHAM: "Is it fair to say that the Russian government is still involved in American politics?"
COMEY: "Yes." —via @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/TFrNp4cXGO
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 3, 2017
Donald Trump hasn’t fallen into a deranged mental state. This is a permanent condition, or more precisely an ongoing ill-informed, brain-fart response to any and all topics. You can be dismissive by calling him an egoistic, know-nothing six year-old, but the Morning Joe guys are suggesting that he’s gotten worse lately, that he’s downswirling. He’s not. Trump is the exact same guy he’s always been — the same full-of-shit, living-in-his-own-realm blowhard who likes to swagger around and be nervy and impertinent. He listens to his swollen gut and improvises from moment to moment, unimpeded by facts that are not to his liking.