Yesterday’s Jerry Lewis meditations led to re-reading portions of Nick Tosches‘ “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams“, and eventually to thinking about old-time, mob-influenced Las Vegas and the original Ocean’s 11. And I was reminded how that so-so film has (a) an excellent beginning via that Saul Bass main-title sequence and (b) a soulful lonely-guy finale as the Rat Pack shuffles along the Las Vegas Strip, their loot up in smoke. The rest is just okay. And I began asking which other films qualify in this regard? They start off like a house on fire and conclude in a poignant, just-right way, but mostly they just dribble the ball.

Suburbicon (Paramount, 10,.27) feels Fargo-ish. Middle-class milquetoast (Matt Damon, William H. Macy) up to no good, dodging the authorities when they drop by the office, a clever investigator (Frances McDormand, Oscar Isaac) on his tail, etc. Just as portions of Stanley Kubrick‘s never-filmed Napoleon turned out to be a warm-up for portions of Barry Lyndon, it seems as if elements in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Suburbicon script, written in ’86 but never filmed until George Clooney and Grant Heslov took the reins, were used in Fargo ten years later.

Two changes: Woody Allen‘s recently upgraded Wonder Wheel added to the roster, and a mistake fixed regarding Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour.

It took me months to finally buy the Twilight Time Bluray of Karel Reiz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain? (’78), but I’m so glad I did. The up-rez turned out better than expected. I’ve seen this Vietnam War-era drug-dealing action drama at least 14 or 15 times. I have most of the dialogue memorized. (“You know what I think, ‘on some level’? I think you’re the kind of wise-ass, twinkle-toes cocksucker who writes a tear-jerk play against the Marines and then turns around and smuggles a shitload of heroin into this country.”) But I’ve never seen Richard Klein‘s images look so clean and sharp and organically right. On that awful 2001 MGM “Contemporary Classics” DVD the opening ten minutes looked muddy and bleary — no longer!

11:22 am update, after peak eclipse moment in Casper, Wyoming: I was expecting to see total darkness like it was suddenly 11:30 pm, but it only got dusky. Yes, it was dark enough for the house, store and street lights of Casper to be turned on — cool — but the sky never became night, or at least not according to the video feed. I wanted to suddenly see stars. I wanted the same kind of moment that Bing Crosby experienced in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but that didn’t happen. As with Jupiter, Hollywood Elsewhere feels let down, disappointed.

Earlier: It’s not the shadow of the moon overtaking the intense glow of the sun. It’s the astonishing gradations of light around us, increasingly diminished but unlike any dusky magic hour ever captured on film. That‘s what everyone will absorb and remember for the rest of their lives.