My last iPhone 8 Nightmare report (“Latest From Apple Obstructionists“) was posted on 7.29 — 20 days ago. Yesterday this sordid saga finally came to a merciful end. The phone is now loaded and rolling with all the apps, all the music, all the photos, all the data, all the contacts…everything.
I once again need to express my heartfelt gratitude to “Mr. Hotshot,” a renowned director-actor who put me in touch with his tech guy, Michael Newman, who runs a company called Omegapoint-it.com. Last week Newman put me in touch with an iCloud engineer in Austin, and that’s what finally did the trick. If it hadn’t been for Newman, I would still be out in the cold.
That said, I have nothing but contempt for Apple’s drag-ass response to this situation. Losing the phone was totally my fault, of course, but the Apple guys were lackadaisical and inconsistent and, except for three or four exceptions, obstructionists when I begged over and over for help. I will never forget this. May the karma godz come back and bite them all in the ass.
By all means laugh heartily and merrily and deep from within, and as loudly as may be appropriate. But don’t laugh “uncontrollably”, at least not in the presence of others. Certainly not when I’m around. Once you’ve horse-laughed or bray-laughed for five or six seconds, turn that shit down already. Especially in a Starbucks or even a sports bar. The louder and longer you laugh in mixed company, the lower your level of breeding and social discipline. I’ve noted several times that the worst laughers are young women after they’ve had a glass of wine. Then come half-drunk guys in sports bars.
The exalted if somewhat tragic reputation of Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons (’42) has been so deeply drilled into film-maven culture that even today, no one will admit the plain truth about it. I’m referring to the fact that Tim Holt‘s George Amberson Minafer character is such an obnoxious and insufferable asshole that he all but poisons the film.
I’ve watched Welles’ Citizen Kane 25 or 30 times, but because of Holt I’ve seen The Magnificent Ambersons exactly twice. (And the second viewing was arduous.) Even Anthony Quinn‘s Zampano in Federico Fellini‘s La Strada is more tolerable than Minafer, and Zampano is a bellowing beast.
Welles admitted decades later that he knew “there would be an uproar about a picture which, by any ordinary American standards, was much darker than anybody was making pictures…there was just a built-in dread of the downbeat movie, and I knew I’d have that to face.”
He’d calculated that audiences would forget their discomfort when Minafer “gets his comeuppance” at the very end. But even in the truncated 88-minute version of the film that exists today, audiences still have to suffer Minafer’s ghastly arrogance, snippiness and smallness of spirit for roughly 80 minutes, and most people simply can’t tolerate this much abuse.
The Wiki page notes that a rough cut of Ambersons received a mixed response after a previewing on 3.17.42. Welles’ film was previewed a second time after film editor Robert Wise removed several minutes from it, “but the audience’s response did not improve.” Uhm, hello?
Why is the final La Strada scene of Zampano weeping on the beach so emotionally satisfying while the finale of Ambersons leaves you feeling a mixture of “meh” and relief? Other than the fact that Fellini understood human nature better than Welles, I think I’ve explained why.
The same issue clouds the watching of Welles’ Touch of Evil — i.e., Detective Hank Quinlan is too gross, too drooling and altogether too much to take. He all but vomits in the audience’s lap.
Notice the black bars on the below ScreenPrism essay. This is how the film should be presented on 16 x 9 flatscreens. Shame on Criterion for this latest act of vandalism (on top of their teal-tinted Blurays of Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham).
Especially Michel Gondry…aarrgghh! The best guy to replace James Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 would have to be able to deploy a wicked, anarchic, irreverent sense of humor at the drop of a hat. I therefore nominate Ben Stiller. Seriously. Or Shane Black. Or Wedding Crashers auteur David Dobkin.
