From Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:

so powerful pic.twitter.com/yIk9HbHfNM

— kylee (@tomakeupwityou) May 31, 2020

Clint Eastwood‘s acting was always mounted upon steely defiance and seething disdain — the squint, the snarl, the snippy retort. His best performances used this mannered foundation to reach outward and inward to explore the sadder, more tender realms. For me his greatest streak in this regard happened between ’92 and ’95 — Unforgiven (’92), In the Line of Fire (’93) and The Bridges of Madison County (’95 — Robert Kincaid was arguably his saddest and most sympathetic role). Clint surged again with two roles in the mid aughts — Million Dollar Baby (’04) and Gran Torino (’08). Five performances for the ages, and all delivered in his 60s and 70s.

After his three-year, three-picture hot streak (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon), Peter Bogdanovich injured himself and his career in three significant ways.

One, the casually smug and arrogant thing, which seemed to intensify after Peter and Cybill Shepherd were the focus of a 5.13.74 People cover story. Two, Bogdanovich seemed to give up on the idea of substantive, reality-driven subjects after The Last Picture Show (post-’71 he never delivered another poignant scene that touched bottom and emotionally penetrated like “Sam the Lion at the swimming hole”). Three, he concurrently began to over-invest in the mythology of nostalgia and old-time Hollywood — the result was a one-two-three punch (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love, Nickelodeon) that totally took the wind out of his sails.

Saint Jack, They All Laughed and Mask (a director-for-hire gig) restored some of the lustre, but the magic dust had evaporated.

If Bogdanovich had decided to switch horses right after Paper Moon and directed a couple of films that delivered reality currents (some kind of divorce drama or a paranoid political thriller or maybe a Rainman-type family thing) that were tethered not to the ’30s but the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s, things might have turned out differently.

Plus for all his acumen as a director-writer and film historian, Bogdanovich’s social-political instincts were not brilliant.

Over the last couple of centuries many honorable writers have been put behind bars, regardless of the charge…Jean Genet, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jack London, Malcolm X, etc. To this list we can now add David Poland.

pic.twitter.com/fKwVCgbyZy

— David Poland (@DavidPoland) May 31, 2020

“Some say it’s your nose, some say it’s your toes, but I think it’s your mind.” — Frank Zappa, Mothers of Invention.

Husband and wife beaten with 2x4s while defending store in Rochester, NY. from r/Rochester

what the actual fuck pic.twitter.com/rIRSyNgZCS

— gianna (@lonelyfilms) May 31, 2020

I mean. They couldn’t stop themselves from blatantly escalating things. Even for a few days, even cynically, even for the optics. pic.twitter.com/YVDjnvVGnY

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) May 31, 2020

This is now a documentary pic.twitter.com/xIY1Xhp0c7

— Gary (@splungekik) May 31, 2020

Shot and edited by Tatiana Antropova:

The chaos, looting and anarchy that I saw first-hand on Melrose Ave. an hour ago (including a small fire just east of Fairfax that was being put out) had nothing, repeat, nothing to do with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last Monday. It was a “get all you can” free-for-all.

Mostly I saw Average Joes with vaguely alarmed expressions standing around and eyeballing the destruction, but here and there I saw teenaged and 20something POCs in masks and hoodies grabbing all they could. Madhouse looting, small stores.

Way to go, guys! — raise high the flag of freedom. Donald Trump says “thanks!”

If poor George Floyd is watching from above, it’s a safe bet he’s feeling a mixture of shame and disgust. (Thanks to the fearless Tatiana Antropova for taking most of these stills and videos.)

From “Robert Redford: The Biography” by Michael Feeney Callan, page 40:

Why would WeHo natives vandalize a bus or smash the windows of a cop car? I’m not feeling the groundswell. Choppers in the air, sounds of distant sirens, etc. This is WeHo, guys…what am I missing? I feel the George Floyd sadness and revulsion, but not (is it okay to say this?) necessarily locally. All politics is local. WeHo is WeHo…you know. Gay stuff, metrosexual stylings, Pavillions/Gelson’s, rumblehogging, Mulligatawny take-out, etc.

A line of police officers facing protesters on Third Street just west of Fairfax, where some people have climbed and vandalized a bus https://t.co/4CEtKhwZCr pic.twitter.com/9QXkTlYnYv

— KTLA (@KTLA) May 30, 2020

HBO Max software managed to take two payments from me last night, or twice what anyone would want to pay. They won’t actually take the money until June 5th, but right now they have two signups from me at $14.99 a pop.

My apparent mistake was signing in on an HBO Max iPhone app. I created a username and a password, and gave them my secondary bank account info. I started searching around, and was soon sold on the idea of watching David Lean‘s Summertime.

So I went to the HBO Max app on the 65-inch Sony HDR and tried to sign in. It didn’t recognize me. Tried again…nyet. Third time…same. Then it prompted me to sign in with my Apple username and password. Huh?

I gradually realized that HBO Max was using previous sign-in information that I’d supplied for HBO Now, which I’d abandoned several months ago. Until recently not that many people knew that HBO Max was a direct permutation of HBO Now with the same $14.99 per month fee. User-wise, the HBO Now app had simply switched its identity to HBO Max.

In any event I was infuriated that the system had failed to understand or recognize that I’d just signed up on my phone. If my HBO Max username, password and bank info was in the system, it should be in the system from any device and in any corner of the world. But no dice…thanks, guys!

So in order to watch Katharine Hepburn do her spinster-in-Venice I signed up a second time with my Apple ID, which is linked to another bank account and which is used for Apple music purchases.

I’ll eventually figure this out, of course. It’s just a matter of cancelling one of the sign-ups, but why the hell didn’t HBO Max recognize me when I tried to access content via the TV app? I think I hate these guys.