The red-pinkish caramel skies are my excuse for posting a touristy Arc de Triomphe photo. Although I’ve been coming here since the ’70s, last night was my first time ascending the monument’s circular metal staircase (my lungs and leg muscles were fine until the very end of the climb) and then finally standing on top and gazing all over, the late-night breezes gently slapping my face.

“Booksmart has been compared to Superbad (2007), and it’s not hard to see why. They’re both raucous but heartfelt stories about two teenage friends trying to make the most of a big night out before setting off on different paths that will probably pull them apart. But there’s another movie that comes to mind when looking at Beanie Feldstein’s Molly — Alexander Payne‘s Election (1999), and its dogged would-be class president Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), another eyes-on-the-prize striver whose ambitions have kept her apart from the rest of her classmates.

“In Booksmart, Molly, the Tracy equivalent, gets placed front and center, given a best friend and a good time. In some ways (though not in their politics), Molly feels like Tracy Flick, set free.

“And yet Booksmart can’t entirely separate itself from the kind of “you think you’re better than me” resentments that Election‘s teacher protagonist harbors toward Tracy (who does, of course, think she’s better than everyone). Molly experiences a mild comeuppance regarding her own superiority complex, but it rests on the assumption that college acceptance is a pure meritocracy, and that she’s misjudged everyone.

“Realistically, it’s more likely she misjudged the resources that those classmates had available to them. The idea that most of us really do have to work that hard to compete with those who have advantages that we never will — and that we still might not get what we want — is less comfortable as the stuff of comedy. But it’s a lot closer to the truth.” — from Allison Wilmore‘s “Booksmart Has A Blind Spot When It Comes To Class,” posted on 5.24.

Wiki excerpt: “On 6.24.47 private pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds that Arnold estimated at a minimum of 1,200 miles an hour. The first post-WWII sighting in the U.S. and the first of the modern-era UFO sightings, Arnold’s description of the objects also led to the press quickly coining the terms flying saucer and flying disc as popular descriptive terms for UFOs.”

Video caption from “‘Wow, What Is That?’ — Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects,” a 5.26 N.Y. Times story. Written and reported by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean:

“Videos filmed by Navy pilots show two encounters with flying objects. One was captured by a plane’s camera off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 20, 2015. That footage, published previously but with little context, shows an object tilting like a spinning top moving against the wind. A pilot refers to a fleet of objects, but no imagery of a fleet was released. The second video was taken a few weeks later.”

This interview with Jack Nicholson happened in ’07, when the renowned actor was 70. With his half-raspy, half-wheezy tobacco voice and gutty tee-hee chuckle, Jack sounds like Barnacle Bill…like some old coot smoking an old stogie or a corncob pipe while sitting in a creaky rocking chair. And he wasn’t even that old. He’s 82 now, and even that‘s not so old. Ask Norman Lloyd.

I’m not buying the Godfather anecdote. First, Nicholson could have never sold himself as an Italian-American. He’s an Irishman from New Jersey, and no amount of deft acting could have hidden that fact. Secondly, I’ve always understood that he didn’t turn down The Godfather offer because he was “doing something else” (Nicholson is almost certainly alluding to The King of Marvin Gardens, which shot during the winter months of late ’71 and early ’72) as much as his belief that he was too old to play a character in his mid 20s, Michael Corleone having been born around 1920. Nicholson turned 35 in ’72, and looked it.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters opens in Paris on Wednesday, or a day and a half before the States. I don’t care if my repeated mentions about Godzilla having become a total fat-ass sound obsessive, but why do I seem to be the only critic-columnist on the planet earth who’s even mentioning this obvious fact?

Five years ago Japanese film enthusiasts were fat-shaming Godzilla, and for good reason. Compared to the original Toho Godzilla of 1954, Gareth Edwards’ super-reptile was definitely Raymond Burr in the mid ’60s. But the new Godzilla is flat-out obese — a kaiju Orson Welles. And no one, it seems, wants to even take note of this. Not even in passing. Not even as a joke.

The reason (and I’m not kidding) is that critics and think-piece writers have sensed that the monster’s expanding belt size is a subliminal gesture of kinship and comfort to the obese community, which of course reps a significant portion of the moviegoing public, and no film writer wants to be accused of fat-shaming. Because in today’s p.c. environment a fat-shamer is indistinguishable from a racist or a homophobe.

I’m no shamer, but I am saying “is anyone besides myself going to look this thing in the eye or what?” All I’m doing is saying (a) “look at him” and (b) “why do you think that is?”

You can bet that if the new Godzilla had ignored the 2014 precedent and reverted to the relatively lean-and-mean physique of the 1954 Toho version, reviewers would be mentioning this left and right. Because they’d have nothing to fear for saying “wow, Godzilla’s been working out…he’s back in shape!” Because that wouldn’t be shaming.

A little less than five years ago, the Washington Post‘s Christopher Ingraham reported that “the top 10 percent of American drinkers — 24 million adults over age 18 — consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week.

“That works out to a little more than four-and-a-half 750 ml bottles of Jack Daniels, 18 bottles of wine, or three 24-can cases of beer. In one week. Or, if you prefer, 10 drinks per day.”

So five years ago we had 24 million woozy drunks stumbling around like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. I’ll bet that figure has risen among Democrats over the last two and half years.

During my worst vodka-and-pink-lemonade period (’93 to early ’96) I was downing maybe two glasses a night. During my white wine heyday I would sip two glasses a night, three or four if I was at a party. I embraced sobriety on 3.20.12.

Ingraham’s data was from Philip J. Cook’s “Paying the Tab,” an economically-minded examination of the costs and benefits of alcohol control in the U.S. Specifically, they’re calculations made using the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) data.

A random, non-prioritized list of 38 potential titles for the 2019 Venice, Telluride and/or Toronto festivals, sent along by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy. Additional titles and/or suggested deletions?

1. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese); 2. Knives Out (Rian Johnson); 3. The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh); 4. Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi); 5. Uncut Gems (The Safdie brothers); 6. Ad Astra (James Gray); 7. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt); 7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller); 8. Bergman Island (Mia Hanson-Love); 9. Fair and Balanced (Jay Roach); 10. A Rainy Day in New York (Woody Allen)

11. The Last Thing He Wanted (Dee Rees); 11. Little Women (Greta Gerwig); 12. The Truth (Hirokazu kore-eda); 13. Antlers (Scott Cooper); 14. Ema (Pablo Larrain); 15. Waiting for the Barbarians (Cirro Guerra); 16. Untitled Noah Baumbach (Noah Baumbach);
17. The King (David Michod); 18. The Glorias: A Life on the Road (Julie Taymor); 19. Fonzo (Josh Trank); 20. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano).

21. Gemini Man (Ang Lee); 22. Downhill (Nat Faxon/Jim Rash); 23. The Hunt (Craig Zobel); 24. Against All Enemies (Benedict Andrews); 25. The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright); 26. Ford vs Ferrari (James Mangold); 27. The Trial of the Chicago (Aaron Sorkin); 28. Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton); 29. The Nest (Sean Durkin); 30. The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci).

31. Joker (Todd Phillips); 32. The True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel); 33. The Good Nurse (Tobias Lindholm); 34. The Devil All the Time (Antonio Campos); 35. The Goldfinch (John Crowley); 36. Lucy in the Sky (Noah Hawley); 37. Wendy (Benh Zeitlin); 38. Waves (Trey Edward Schultz).

Last night Gleb (Tatyana’s 19-year-old son) and I had dinner at Kathmandu (22 Rue des Boulangers, 75005 Paris). As we crossed the Seine an hour later Gleb suddenly realized he’d left a newly purchased hipster hat at the restaurant. I called and was told the hat was safe, but we had to return before closing time.

We were looking at a good 14 or 15 blocks so I called an Uber. Over the next couple of minutes three drivers said they were on their way, but all three cancelled seconds later. Every so often a Los Angeles driver might cancel but I’ve never suffered three cancellations in a row, for heaven’s sake. So we just humped it back and arrived just as they were closing. The hat was sitting exactly where Gleb had left it.

I still haven’t gotten to Antoine Fuqua‘s What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali (HBO, two parts, 165 minutes). Fuqua basically enables the three-time heavyweight champ to narrate his own story. One result, according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Caryn James, “is undeniably an exercise in image-burnishing, not that Ali’s already heroic image needs it.”

Ali’s life has always been its own burnishment, but I’d rather re-watch his YouTube clips (I’ve watched the 10.30.74 “Rumble in the Jungle” match several times) or better yet When We Were Kings. I’ve just re-watched an eloquent N.Y. Times video obit (19 minutes, posted on 6.6.16) that addresses the “what’s my name” thing perfectly. Who’s seen Fuqua’s film and what’s the reaction?

For decades the journalistic response to Martin Luther King‘s extra-marital adventuring has been “okay, that was unfortunately part of who he was but don’t go there because it will only serve racist agendas by diminishing King’s stature as a mythic civil-rights icon.”

That’s likely to remain the default attitude about a forthcoming Standpoint report by MLK and Barack Obama biographer David Garrow about recently uncovered summaries of FBI surveillance tapes of King’s private activities.

One incident, Garrow reports, involved a rape of a female parishioner by the late Logan Kearse, pastor of Baltimore’s Cornerstone Baptist church, while King “watched” — obviously a gross and repulsive tale if true.

Yes, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, convinced that King was a Communist sympathizer, did everything he could in the mid to late ’60s to threaten or compromise the civl rights leader. And yes, Standpoint is a right-leaning publication. But Garrow is a respected, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and, according to his Wiki bio, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The FBI summaries reportedly state that King enjoyed between 40 and 45 conquests. Garrow quote: “I always thought there were 10 or 12 other women, not 40 or 45.”

Garrow has reportedly stated that in the current #MeToo glare, evidence of King’s having witnessed a rape “poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible”. That almost certainly won’t happen due to the age-old “go easy on King’s shenanigans or better yet avert your eyes” guidelines. Wokesters know where their bread is buttered.

I’ve never understood the refusal in some quarters to acknowledge that nobody is pure as the driven snow, that sexuality can be a strange bird, and that outside of deliberate cruelty or causing of physical or psychological harm (which is obviously a fresh concern if you accept the story about King, Kearse and Kearse’s victim) randy behavior shouldn’t figure in any fair-minded assessment of the character and overall importance of this or that historical figure.

I’m sorry to have missed Joanna Hogg‘s The Souvenir, although it was press-screened only once before I left for France. On one hand it’s the best reviewed film of the year so far — 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, 93% on Metacritic — and it won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last January. On the other my ex-wife Maggie, attracted by the romantic heart element, called it “the most over-hyped indie movie of the year…people walked out saying ‘that was painful.'” And since opening on 5.17 in 23 theaters it’s only managed $253,152. The costars are Honor Swinton Byrne (Tilda Swinton‘s 21-year-old daughter), Tom Burke and Tilda herself. HE community reactions?

So why the meager Booksmart business? You can call it a female reboot of Superbad if you want, but it has its own story, theme and attitude. It’s very well directed by Olivia Wilde, and it doesn’t just go through the motions. It delivers what seemed to me like an authentic, connected, well-crafted portrait of Los Angeles teen culture. Is it as good as Superbad? I think it comes reasonably close. Does it offer the same kind of zeitgeist-capture that Risky Business or American Graffiti managed in their eras? In a way it does.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “We can’t ignore the small start of UA/Annapurna’s Booksmart, which is bound to see $7.8M over four days. The movie looked like a female Superbad, but more indie. Great reviews and solid exits, but no one is taking the time out over the holiday weekend to see it. Saturday’s $2.1M ticket sales were down 16% from Friday. Smart, R-rated, critically acclaimed teenage girl pics remain a tough sub-genre. Booksmart‘s bests plays were in big cities on the coast, especially in the west.”

Why has it underperformed? Is it because audiences generally prefer to watch guys perform this kind of rambunctious material? Or is it…what, the lesbian angle or something? (A possible factor outside the big cities, especially in the middle of the country.) Booksmart was supposed to be the film that would finally deliver serious coin to Annapurna, which needs a hit. I was suspicious of the ecstatic SXSW reviews, but this was an exception to the rule.