In mid July of 2019 Tatiana and I did five or six days in Prague, took a train trip to Munich and endured a briefly terrifying lost-wallet episode, and then took another train ride and had a couple of relaxing days in Zurich.

Munich nightmare: Soon after arriving in Munich I took an Uber to meet a journalist friend at a beer garden. The Uber driver was a 40ish Greek immigrant named Oscar. Friendly but maybe a wee bit slow on the pick-up. Anyway, I got out and Oscar took off. 10 seconds later I realized my wallet was missing.

Uber’s search engine didn’t give me Oscar’s phone, but it allowed me to write him and report the loss through their relay software. It also allowed me to write management and ask them to reach out to Oscar, etc. Agitated and scared, I sent three identical messages to Oscar and Uber management. Five minutes passed…nothing. Ten minutes. Then I got a message from Uber saying that they’d passed the news along to Oscar, blah blah. But no Oscar reply.

After 20 or 25 minutes I figured it was a lost cause, and so I called another Uber to take me back to the hotel. And of all the Uber drivers in Munich, Oscar answered and said he’d be there in three minutes. “Oscar!” I wrote back. “I left my wallet in your car less than half an hour ago!” Then he pulled up and I jumped in. “Do you have my wallet?” I asked. “No,” he said, and my heart sank. Then he said, “I gave it to the police.”

Tennessee Williams: “Sometimes there’s God…so quickly!”

So we drove to the precinct in question, and sure enough the wallet was there. And the cops were really friendly. I thanked them, and one said, “You should thank this guy,” referring to Oscar. “But of course!” I said. Happy ending! A $40 tip for Oscar, which he wouldn’t accept at first. But I insisted. I should’ve made it $50 or a $100, I know.

A couple of months ago I posted a short riff about M. Night Shymalan‘s Old (Universal, 7.23). I was basically repeating something that I’d initially wrote in mid March, which was that the Alan Ladd-sized Gael Garcia Bernal ((5’6″) is too short to be married to Vicky Krieps (5’9″) in a movie, at least without their size disparity being a distraction.

“But,” I added, “I’m sure Shyamalan has framed their two-shots carefully or had Bernal wear ‘lifts’ or stand on milk boxes or whatever it took.

And yet I’m told by a couple of critic pallies that Shyamalan makes no attempt to hide the height difference. Veteran critic #1: “[Shyamalan] pretty much shows that differential. You totally get a sense of what a shrimp Bernal is.” Veteran critic #2: “It’s obvious that Krieps is substantially taller [than Bernal]. I actually exaggerated the height difference in my review for a laugh.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics haven’t touched the tall-short dynamic for fear of being accused of sizeism by the Twitter wolves, which could get them fired. So don’t go looking for any mentions of this issue in any Old reviews. Only Hollywood Elsewhere is bold enough to step into this minefield.

I’ll be catching and reviewing Old tomorrow night. Right now it has a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 57% rating on Metacritic.

Strangely, curiously, there are still those who don’t understand (or refuse to accept) that Tony Soprano was whacked while sitting in that family restaurant booth in the final episode of The Sopranos. I’ve come to understand that these very same people have also fought against the obvious interpretation of the aftermath of that tenement shootout scene in Taxi Driver (’75).

For the 17th or 18th time, here’s the damn explanation (and there’s really no arguing this):

At the end of the Taxi Driver shootout sequence and just after the bleeding and mortally wounded Travis Bickle, sitting on that blood-spattered couch, pretends to shoot himself in the head as he goes “bawshhhh!…bawshhhh!”, director Martin Scorsese switches to an overhead crane shot of Bickle on the couch and the two cops standing at the doorway with guns drawn. Looking downward, the camera slowly tracks along the ceiling, over the cops and down the hallway and into the street.

Most would say this is just a cool overhead tracking shot and let it go at that. But it’s just as legitimat to call it the path of Bickle’s spirit as he leaves his body and prepares to merge with the infinite finality…remember Jeannot Szwarc‘s similar spirit-rising-out-of-the-body shot at the end of Somewhere in Time? Same basic idea.

What half-reasonable person could ever buy the denouement of Taxi Driver? Everything in this sequence screams “this is bullshit!” In what world would Bickle, suspected by at least one Secret Service Treasury guy as a potential assassin (“Henry Krinkle”) who nearly killed Sen. Charles Palatine…in what world would Bickle be portrayed as a hero by the media for shooting a corrupt cop and two pimps in an East Side tenement building? The idea is insane.

And this shooting in some way helps the parents of Jodie Foster‘s Iris to find her and bring her back home to Indiana? (Iris will never be restored as a normal Indiana teenager…she’s been ruined and corrupted forever.)

And then Cybil Shepard gives Travis a come-hither look in the rear-view mirror when he gives her a ride in his cab?

It’s all Travis’s death fantasy…the stuff he imagines would happen in a perfect world as he sits on that tenement couch, bleeding profusely and eyeballing the cops and slowly drifting off the mortal coil, etc. The very last shot in Taxi Driver is of a seemingly startled Travis looking into his cab’s rearview mirror, and then whoosh…he’s gone. No reflection. Because Travis isn’t actually there.

Are there really people out there who think that the denoument is somehow real? Yes, there are.

Last weekend French President Emanuel Macron told citizens who’ve refused to get vaccinated that their horseshit would no longer be tolerated — no access to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, plane flights or long-distance trains without official proof of vaccination (or a recent negative test).

Imagine if President Biden had the sand and the stones to say the same thing to American bumblefucks — “get the vaccine or else, guys…we’ve had it with your stupidity and obstinacy and ignorance…you’re making things worse for everyone,” etc.

N.Y. Times, 7.19, reported by Aurelian Breeden: More than 100,000 people took to the streets across France over the weekend to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s tough new vaccination strategy…demonstrators in Paris and elsewhere vented against what some called Mr. Macron’s ‘dictatorship’ after he announced that a “health pass”would be required for many to attend or enter most public events and venues.

“At the same time, however, his policy seemed to have [brought about] the desired effect: Record numbers of people flocked to vaccination centers in advance of the new rules coming into effect next month.”

Incidentally: All Telluride Film Festival attendees have been requested to upload their vaccination cards by this Friday (7.23),

From Owen Gleiberman‘s review of M. Night Shyamalan‘s Old (Universal, 7.23):

I think he will. I trust Bob Strauss. He was the one of the first critics to explain that Get Out was much, much more than just an Ira Levin ripoff — that it had a hidden, “holy shit!” double-backflip meaning that only the Gods of Perception were able to grasp. Strauss fully understands the creative schemes and instincts of Jordan Peele. Some people didn’t get Get Out. I got it and so did Levin’s ghost, but if you want the real lowdown, go to Strauss.

There were slight concerns about Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth having been turned down by at least one major festival, but now the sun is shining with the black-and-white, shot-on-a-sound-stage version of William Shakesperare‘s classic melodrama of bloody greed and ambition booked to open the 59th New York Film Festival on Friday, 9.24.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand will play long-of-tooth versions of the titular Scottish character and his scheming “out damned spot” wife. The only costar names I recognize are Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Root.

We all understand that films chosen to open a major film festival are usually audience-friendly, as in a wee bit soft or milquetoasty or at least not overly edgy. It would appear that The Tragedy of Macbeth may be an exception to this tradition, given the NYFF’s decision to apply the term “anguished” in their official description.

NYFF press release: “A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition.”

If NYFF honcho Eugene Hernandez manages to land Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Soggy Bottom, that’ll be two significant feathers in his cap.

A24 will release The Tragedy of Macbeth theatrically before it streams on Apple or Apple +.

Roman Polanski‘s Macbeth (’71) will always be my favorite version.

Dune trailer observation #1; Kyle MacLachlan wasn’t a big tall muscle man, but he seemed average sized in a fitting sort of way and at least half-capable of handling himself in a fight. In the new Dune trailer there’s a scene shared by Jason Momoa and Timothee Chalamet, and I’m sorry but Chalamet seems rather short and slight in this context. Leading men in epic movies are obliged to fulfill a certain machismo factor. They don’t have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatsisname in John Carter, but on the other hand they can’t be toothpicks.

Dune trailer observation #2: By all appearances this movie would be all sand and wind and big sets and wispy nothingness without the older, salt-and-pepper, middle-aged guys — Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista — doing the heavy lifting.

Dune trailer observation #3; Did Zendaya train at RADA? Has she done Shakespeare? Without subtitles I wouldn’t be able to understand a single word that she’s half-muttering and half-speaking under her breath…”rolling over the sands you can see spice in the air..the outsiders ravage our layahnds in front of our eyes.” Could Warner Bros. offer special Zendaya-subtitled versions of Dune in theatres? Because every time she says something it’s gonna be “oh, Jesus…here we go.”

Dune trailer observation #4: Spices are fuel in this context, but they aren’t essentials like food, clothing, water and shelter so who cares from a planet Earth perspective? I sure as shit don’t, I can tell you. And do I really have to hang out in a dusty desert environment for 155 minutes? Yes, bitch — you really have to.