The national nightmare continues until those tens of million of idiots who’ve said they won’t get the vaccine…the plague won’t really lift until these assholes change their tune.

I am one of the many columnist-critics who regard Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing as one of the finest films of the ’80s. I have it ranked sixth on my current ’80s roster. I decided that the instant that Mookie threw that garbage can through Sal’s Bed-Stuy pizza parlor window. It therefore comes as no surprise to me or anyone else that World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy announced yesterday that Do The Right Thing was the #1 choice among over 200 critics.

If this or that critic insists that Lee’s film is the best of the Reagan decade, fine. Ditto others choosing Platoon or Local Hero or The King of Comedy or Prince of the City or Raging Bull. Or HE going with Risky Business. Whatever. But when you hear that Do The Right Thing topped “almost half the lists,” as Ruimy puts it, one can at least wonder why. Most of us agree that people (and especially critics) tend to judge films according to whatever cultural winds may be blowing at a given moment, and right now Spike’s 1989 film seems to fit right in.

Ruimy: “Lee’s film no doubt benefited from an abundance of relevance over the past year in a socially and politically tumultuous America dominated by racial issues.”

HE ’80s faves: Risky Business, The Hidden, Drugstore Cowboy, Raging Bull, Local Hero, Do The Right Thing, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Prince of the City, Blue Velvet, Platoon.

#11 through #16: Full Metal Jacket, Scarface, Thief, Lost in America, Die Hard and Aliens.

An assortment of clips from New York-centric films of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s might suggest a portrait of grime, grit and squalor — a city that used to scare the shit out of tourists who dared to venture out of the Times Square area. But Jonathan Hertzberg‘s “Dirty Old New York” is not that. It’s mainly a portrait of old analog Manhattan — dicey-looking black dudes with big Afros, gas guzzlers, gaffiti-covered subway cars, dial pay phones, trash on those John Lindsay-Abe Beame streets, vinyl turntables, tube television sets, a co-residing Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, 3/4″ video tapes, VCRs, etc. A nice time-trip thing, but I wouldn’t call it “dirty.” [Originally posted on 3.27.14.]

I have a certain affection for films shot in Ultra Panavision 70 and Camera 65, processes from the ’50s and ’60s that yielded aspect ratios of 2.76:1. (They were technically identical or damn near.) Actually, there were 11 such films in all, but I only have a fondness for three — Ben-Hur (Camera 65), Mutiny on the Bounty (UP70) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (ditto).

I never got around to seeing Raintree County, which also was shot in Camera 65.

Bounty and Empire were shot by the great Robert Surtees, and the framings and lighting are quite elegant. Empire was shot by Robert Krasker (Odd Man Out, Brief Encounter, The Third Man).

I have no affection at all for Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight, which squandered the UP70 potential by mostly shooting inside the darkly lighted Minnie’s Haberdashery.

I’ve never seen Ken Annakin‘s The Battle of the Bulge (UP70, released on 12.16.65), and after watching this Smilebox trailer it’s possible I may never set the time aside.

The dialogue conveys stodginess, or what I would call an overdose of “officer-talk”. You can tell the whole thing smells. Any mid-’50s-and-after movie costarring Dana Andrews is something to be feared. German soldiers speaking German-accented English was outlawed after The Longest Day, but Annakin went there anyway. The Wikipedia page features a long list of historical inaccuracies. Dwight D. Eisenhower came out of retirement to denounce the film for gross inaccuracies. It was shot in Spain with little or no snow on the ground, and too many scenes feature the wrong kind of typography (I’ve been to the the Ardennes forest) and not enough pine trees.

Six Dr. Seuss books by Theodor Geisel (1904 – 1991) have been zotzed by the p.c. police.

Earlier today Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced the cancellation of “If I Ran The Zoo,” “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” because portions of said volumes “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong” by way of “offensive imagery.”

Everyone wants hateful images erased and hate speech squelched, but how aggressive and widespread will future cleansings be? And when will the dragnet extend to movies?

If there’s to be any consistency how can certain films that contain offensive content within a certain context — Martin Scorsese‘s cameo scene in Taxi Driver, for one, not to mention huge chunks of Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained and portions of The Hateful Eight….how can these films be left alone while the legacy of Dr. Seuss is shamed and to some extent dismissed?

Friendo #1: “What’s weird is that under Obama Seuss was praised, understood and wildly appreciated. In 2021 not so much. I guess no one can really argue with this. Our culture has simply and dramatically changed where the past is no longer tolerated. Or understood.”

Friendo #2: “Ugh…I want to move to Neptune. Fortunately, those aren’t classic Suess titles, but still: Erasing the past is a Marxist-fascist paradigm. You don’t erase a work of art because of stereotypes. What’s next — erasing Taxi Driver because of Scorsese’s back-seat rant? This is madness.”

Friendo #1: “Yeah, good point.”

Friendo #2: “I think most liberal/progressives think that doing this is common sense — right in line with the idea of making blackface or the N-word verboten. They don’t seem to realize that this is book burning. You don’t erase the past. At least, not in a free society. I’m also outraged at the demonizing of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

Friendo #1: “It’s really the corporations that buckle.”

Friendo #2: “The corporations love wokeness. Most of them are run by racists (i.e., the bro ‘libertarian’ fascists of Silicon Valley), but wokeness has turned out to be the greatest means of dividing and conquering their workers, and controlling their every move, that has ever been devised.

“Robin DiAngelo isn’t a racial-sensitivity guru. She’s a highly paid, whip-wielding corporate disciplinarian who cloaks her control-freak ideology in race propaganda. It’s no surprise, really, that her latest book is an attack on white progressives. I have no doubt that she’s a closet Republican.”

Friendo #3: “Even Biden broke tradition by not mentioning Dr Seuss in his ‘Read Across America Day’ proclamation He’s woke! Or at least scared of the wokesters.”

HE: During last year’s election campaigns I was nursing an idea that wokesterism and cancelling might begin to ease when Trump is finally gone. Now I’m not so sure.”

Who in this country constitutes the core rooting audience for the Meghan and Harry show? Who cares? Not guys, I’m presuming. Late teens to early 30something women? The same would-be TikTok and Instagram influencers who follow Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Charli D’Amelio, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez, et. al.? I’m not getting what the thing is. Followers are hoping some of that residual British royalty aura might rub off?

When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry withdrew from their royal responsibilities in England and moved to this country, it was agreed they would no longer receive “sovereign grant” money and would earn professional income. Settled in Montecito, they’ve “founded their own production company” and “signed a multiyear deal with Netflix,” says Business Insider. Harry is worth between $30M and (according to townandcountrymag.com) $40M — an inheritance from Princess Diana plus an annual allowance from Prince Charles. Markle is allegedly worth around $5M.

I addressed Harry’s thinning thatch last fall — no need to go there again.