The squishy blue pillow saved my life. It made it possible to catch a few zees on the floor of Reagan National between midnight and 5 am. Terminal D is being vacuumed and wiped down by graveyard shifters. Could there be a sadder, grimmer way to earn a paycheck?

I decided against taking the rolled-up sleeping pad as they probably wouldn’t let me board with it anyway. Three or four terrible hours on a lounge floor inside Reagan National! Waiting for 10 pm departure from LaGuardia. I can do this.

It would appear that Noah Baumbach‘s White Noise has been more or less downgraded, at least as far as Venice Film Festival critics are concerned. The last time I checked a 69% Metacritic rating signified something between teetering and over and out.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s less-than-ecstatic Variety review: “On the page, Don DeLillo‘s ‘White Noise’ achieved total heaviosity. It was a novel of ideas. But that’s a tricky thing to translate to the big screen. As a movie, White Noise announces its themes loudly and proudly, but the trouble is that it announces them more than it makes you feel them.

“Greta Gerwig has one of the best scenes — a tearfully extended, ripped-from the-gut monologue in which she confesses her adultery to Jack, though her transgression isn’t about any desire to stray so much as her compulsion to get those [mood-stabilizing] pills by any means necessary. By the time Jack heads out with a tiny gun to confront the man Babette slept with, White Noise has found its heart of darkness but lost its pulse. We no longer buy what we’re seeing, even as we’re told, explicitly, what it all means. The film ties itself into knots to explicate the bad news.

“How telling, then, that it’s so much more effective when it’s willing to be upbeat, notably in a triumphantly daffy closing-credits dance sequence that takes place in the brightly lit aisles of the A&P. Set to the joyful thumping groove of ‘New Body Rhumba’ by LCD Soundsystem, the place really does seem like ironic nirvana. That’s a quality White Noise could have used more of.”

Yesterday a friend called this teaser for Florian Zeller‘s The Son (Sony Pictures Classics 11.11) “a parody of an older, well-educated white person’s Oscar bait film.”

All I know is that I hate the kid (played by Zen McGrath). He’s playing a character called Nicholas, and within the realm of the film my basic attitude is “whatever it is you’re shaky or unstable or feeling hurt about it, get over it and shut the fuck up…okay? Really. I’m sick of young sensitive guys whose feelings are hurt about whatever. Seriously, fuck off.”

Directed by Zeller from a screenplay he co-wrote with Christopher Hampton, The Son is part of a “spiritual trilogy” that includes The Father and The Mother. Costarring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, McGrath, Hugh Quarshie and Anthony Hopkins. Premiering in Venice on 9.7.22.

The current population of the United States of America is 332,403,650. A travel statistics site estimates that in 2019, or before the pandemic struck, 5.6 million Americans visited Italy. That comes to 1.68% of the U.S. population, which surprises me. It’s hard to guesstimate how many Americans have visited Venice altogether, but I’m guessing fewer than 3%. I’ll bet the same affluent people visit time and again.

“…for being blatant military propaganda”? Really? Who said this exactly? First time I’ve heard it.

This isn’t all that funny. Obvious stuff.

Veteran newsperson and CTV National News anchor Lisa LaFlamme, 58, has apparently been canned because she let her gray hair go. Accusations of sexism are now being flung at Bell Media. News anchors have to look sharp, trim and attractive, of course, but within this older-woman spectrum LaFlamme looks fine. Her hair is thick and well-styled…what’s the problem? A full head of silver or white hair (i.e., Jamie Lee Curtis) is best. “Starting to go gray”, maybe not so much.

Not enough marquee-brand actresses adhere to the Steve McQueen school of less-is-more acting. One of my all-time favorite female performances in this vein was Kristin Scott Thomas‘ grief-struck ex-convict in I’ve Loved You For So Long (’08). On the other end of things are the over-emoters, and one of the most deeply annoying in this regard has been Emily Blunt. For me at least.

When I think of top-tier actresses who seem strangely and fundamentally opposed to the kind of acting that Thomas exhibited in ILYSL, Blunt tops the list.

To me she’s always “acting,” and all this strenuous effort kinda drains my soul. Blunt has been kicking it since playing Meryl Streep‘s assistant in The Devil Wears Prada (’06) and in my book she’s given only two performances I’ve been able to really believe and settle into, and they both opened eight years ago — the hard-ass “Rita Vrataski” in Edge of Tomorrow and the baker’s wife in Into the Woods.

Okay, I liked her also in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (’11). Okay, she wasn’t bad in Charlie Wilson’s War (’07) and Sunshine Cleaning (’08).

I was actually okay with Blunt until she started playing above-the-title leads, a period which seemed to begin with The Five Year Engagement (’12). All I know is that I flinched, twitched and occasionally rolled my eyes during her performances in The Devil Wears Prada (too much sniffling and sneezing), Looper, Arthur Newman (“I don’t like Durm!”), Sicario (really hated her in this…too emotional, too actressy, picking up some stray dude in a bar), The Huntsman: Winter’s War, The Girl on the Train, A Quiet Place (stop “acting”!), Mary Poppins Returns (awful…Blunt’s second-worst film), A Quiet Place Part II (Blunt suggestion — try imagining that the camera isn’t there and that what’s happening in a given moment is simply happening to your character alone), and Jungle Cruise (arguably Blunt’s worst film ever).

With Leonardo DiCaprio and Camilla Morrone having parted ways, Leo has reaffirmed a lifelong pattern — no girlfriends over 25, and certainly no marriage or kids.

My guess is that he’ll finally tie the knot somewhere in his early to mid 50s, which is usually when hounds start to realize that older guys constantly sniffing around is déclassé. Warren Beatty got married in ‘92, when he was 55. George Clooney said “I do” in ‘14, at age 53.

I heard many years ago that young DiCaprio told Beatty at a party, “I’m gonna break your record.” (Beatty denied it but it’s a great anecdote.) I’m guessing the Killers of the Flower Moon star will follow the Beatty bridal path also. Leo turns 48 in November, and the clock will start ticking faster and faster. HE envisions a modest wedding in Italy sometime in ‘27 or ‘28, certainly no later than ‘30.