Day: July 18, 2022

…and the whole jerkwater girly-glam, gender-fluid fashion thing that he’s been statement-izing for a year or two…I guess I was interpreting this as a detour or phase of some kind…an exhibition thing that he wanted to embrace and which would run its course and then on to the next thing…but Styles and others seem to be settling into this anti-straight, anti-traditional-dude, embrace-the-pink-and-the-frilly fashion attitude, and I for one am feeling a bit irked and even (do I dare say this?) angry. I’m sick of his wearing pearl necklaces and transparent black-net sleeves and I don’t care if I sound harumphy. Harry Styles can honestly go fuck himself, and this, to me, has nothing to do with sexuality or gender issues. It has to do with simply being sick of this shit…okay?

Pics stolen from Vincent Boucher’s “Hollywood Men Are Having A Vibe Shift,” a 7.9 Ankler article.

Variety’s Gene Maddaus has posted a 7.18.22 article that summarizes recently unsealed 2010 transcripts about the decades-simmering Roman Polanski case, and more particularly the critical views of retired prosecutor Roger Gunson.

The gist is that 12 years ago Gunson believed that Judge Lawrence Rittenbrand (now deceased) was a bad apple who had rashly reneged on a plea deal with Polanski’s attorneys.

Is there anything new in these transcripts? Not if you’ve seen Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (‘08) and her follow up doc, Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out (‘12). The whole Gunson critique and the Rittenbrand history is contained, explained and examined every which way.

Maddaus excerpt:

The long and the short is that the facts about Rittenbrand’s mishandling of this case have been available for well over a decade and damn near 15 years. It was mainly a matter of watching the first Zenovich doc; the second was dessert.

Frank Capra‘s Arsenic and Old Lace (’44), a broad macabre farce set in a Brooklyn rooming house, began as a hit Broadway play that opened in January 1941. (Here’s Brooks Atkinson’s N.Y. Times review.) Capra’s film shot sometime in late ’41 or early ’42, and was originally slated to open on 9.30.42. But the contract with the play’s producers stated that the film would not be released until the Broadway run ended. The play ran for for three and a half years (or until the summer of ’44), so the film wasn’t released until 9.1.44.

I first watched the Capra flick as a kid, and found it okay. I streamed a 480p version two or three years ago, and while I enjoyed Raymond Massey‘s performance (in the part created on the New York stage by Boris Karloff) and Peter Lorre‘s, I found it hyper and strenuous. It charges you up at first, but then it gradually wears you down. And how many thousands of times has the play been performed in high schools?

Criterion is releasing a “new 4K digital transfer” Bluray version on 10.11.22. It’ll look better than ever before, I’m sure, but would want to shell out $31 and change for a copy? Not I.

Chris Nolan wasn’t always a big-deal, big-budget, IMAX-fortified mythologist whose movies were invariably greeted as events. Once upon a time he was just a clever, regular-guy filmmaker. We’re talking about a five-year period when he made Following (’98), Memento (’00) and Insomnia (’02). That Nolan no longer exists, of course. He became CHRIS NOLAN in ’05 with Batman Begins and never looked back. But I miss the 29-year-old Memento guy…I really do.

Barbet Schroeder‘s Reversal of Fortune (’90) delivers one of my all-time favorite endings, which isn’t an “ending” as much ironic commentary about the mindset of a rich, very blase sociopath (Jeremy Irons‘ Claus von Bulow) and the difference between the “little people” and the Fifth Avenue elites who occasionally pop into this or that store. The scene happens between :50 and 1:25. HE comment: The checkout clerk had it coming because she was so unsubtle when she stared at the front page of the New York Post. She did it so blatantly that she forced Von Bulow to respond.

Mainstream media reporters and editors are generally forbidden…okay, discouraged from filing the kind of straight-from-the-shoulder Monkeypox report that Donald McNeil, the highly respected chronicler of pandemics who reported for The New York Times for decades, has posted on Common Sense.

Excerpt #1: “At the moment, unless you are a gay man with multiple or anonymous sex partners, you are probably at not much risk.”

Excerpt #2: “There are two effective vaccines for this disease and one solid treatment, [so] why are we losing the fight? I blame shortages of vaccines and tests, the initial hesitancy by squeamish health agencies to openly discuss who was most at risk, and the refusal of organizers of lucrative gay sex parties to cancel them over the past few months, even as evidence mounted that they are super-spreader events.”