Not bad, guys. Good to hear it again live. Thumbs up and all that. But I prefer the 1965 version. Especially with headphones. Oh, and Keith looks different. Like a Notre Dame gargoyle.

Six and 1/2 years ago Jessica Pare was quite the Mad Men magnet. Over the last three seasons (#5, #6, #7) nearly everyone was focused on her Megan Draper character, particularly her gaining and declining relationship with Don Draper. I was just as fascinated as anyone. Pare was cool, fascinating, in the conversation…a vital element in the watch-and-wonder world of 2012 and beyond.

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If a movie really has that special punch and pizazz, most of us can remember certain portions and lines. I’ll bet I’ve memorized dialogue from a thousand movies, maybe two or three thousand. Name any memorable film from the 1930s to today and I’ll recite a line or two. If not I’ll at least describe a distinctive shot or two, or something about the cinematography or production design. Go ahead — name one. I’m a walking film library. I can do this all day long.

I’m mentioning this because it hit me this morning that I can’t remember a single line or moment from Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln. I remember that early, completely unbelievable scene in which Daniel Day Lewis chats with two black Union soldiers (Colman Domingo as Private Harold Green, David Oyelowo as Corporal Ira Clark) and two white ones, but I don’t recall a word of the dialogue. I recall Oyelowo reciting a portion of the Gettysburg Address from memory, but I mostly recall muttering “bullshit”.

I remember Janusz Kaminski‘s milky, shafts-of-light cinematography, but he always shoots in this fashion. I remember the tone of DDL’s performance (and that he won the Best Actor Oscar), but I don’t remember a single one of his lines….not one. I recall that it won an Oscar for Best Production Design, but I also recall being enraged by the use of filtered sunlight inside the U.S. Senate chamber, which of course has no windows.

I also recall that Lincoln doesn’t offer a single establishing shot of the White House or the U.S. Capitol (the huge dome of which had recently been completed in early 1863) in the entire film. No images of how the White House South Lawn or Pennsylvania Avenue or the Treasury building or the Potomac might have looked.

I recall it was almost entirely composed of medium shots of shadowy interiors, medium shots of shadowy interiors and, just to break up the monotony, medium shots of shadowy interiors.

I remember writing about the state of plumbing in the Lincoln White House of the 1860s, and an HE commenter making a joke about the nation’s 16th president “dropping a deuce” at some point in the second act.

If you can’t remember a single good scene or line, the movie probably wasn’t that good to begin with.

Final sentence of my 11.8.12 review: “The bottom line? Lincoln is a good film, deserving of respect and worth seeing, but it happens at an emotional distance and feels like an educational slog.”

Five years ago I repeated one of the most important rules for famous guys attending public events, which is to never wear orthopedic old-man shoes.

I was derided for saying this, of course, but you can’t explain this aesthetic to deplorable-shoe types. Either you get the importance of wearing elegant shoes in public or you don’t. Wear your grandpa shoes all you want when you’re at home or shuffling around the mall, but never in front of the paying public. The wearing of comfort shoes is a sign of frailty and the lack of a vibrant future.

Nancy Pelosi obviously understands this philosophy, this reality. During last week’s pride parade in San Francisco, the 80-year-old Speaker of the House wore purple Manolo heels. While marching in a parade! Nobody would’ve blinked or said a word if she’d worn sensible shoes or even hiking boots, but she toughed it out because she gets it. She understands what Bruce Dern, Robert De Niro and other guys of that age group refuse to acknowledge.

You know who also gets it? Martin Scorsese. Dude’s pushing 77 and he always wears Italian-style black leather lace-ups.

Physical media is living on borrowed time, of course, but how much longer discs will continue to be sold on Amazon and carried by Best Buy is anyone’s guess. I’ll always cherish the idea of owning choice Blurays and 4K UHD discs, but will I still be adding to the collection in 2030? Will everything be streaming in five years? Ten? Amazing that 40-something percent of the purchasing public is still buying DVDs.

My first reaction to yesterday’s 7.1 earthquake was one of surprise but not alarm. It lasted longer than the 6.4, yes, but was just another mild roller. My second reaction was to wonder if life would be imitating Mark Robson‘s Earthquake (’74), a mezzo-mezzo disaster flick in which the Big One was preceded by two midsized shakers. (Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson seemed to have the same thought.) Yesterday a seismologist said there’s a one-in-ten chance of “another 7” within the next few days.

Earthquake was no great shakes. It struck me as odd that the same-aged Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner were cast as an unhappily married couple, mainly, I suppose, because they seemed unevenly matched. (She looked like a boozy wreck while Chuck was holding his own.) The model makers and special-effects team did the best they could, of course, but for me the Big Shakedown sequence never surpassed the level of a good try. The dp was the respected Phillip Lathrop, and yet Earthquake had that flat TV-show lighting that so many Universal films were burdened with back then. The only remarkable aspects were (a) the Sensurround rumble effect and (b) the fact that Heston died at the end.