Lula (aka Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva) is in — one of most dramatic and astonishing political comebacks in world history. And Jair Bolsonaro, the grotesque and contemptible Brazilian Trump, is out.

If you’re talking inappropriate violations of way-too-young girls in the 1950s, is there really a substantial difference between 23-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis marrying a 13-year-old cousin (obviously not cool but then Lewis and Myra Gale Brown stayed together for 12 years) and 24 year-old Elvis Presley doing the nasty with Priscilla Beaulieu in 1959, when she was 14?

The difference is that Presley and manager Tom Parker kept the particulars under wraps while Lewis stupidly admitted everything.

From “Jerry Lee Lewis’s Life of Rock and Roll and Disrepute,” a 10.29.22 New Yorker piece by Tom Zito:

Posted on 3.1.19: Earlier this month I posted two thumbnail assessments of the careers of Tony Curtis and William Holden. They both enjoyed relatively brief hot-streak periods. Holden’s lasted six or seven years, or between Stalag ’17 (’53) and The Horse Soldiers (’59). Curtis’s fortunate-son period ran 11 or 12 years, or between Sweet Smell of Success (’57) and The Boston Strangler (’68).

As noted, Holden kept plugging until his death in ’81, but from The Horse Soldiers on (or over the next 22 years) Holden only made six genuinely good films — The Wild Bunch, Wild Rovers, Breezy, Network, Fedora and S.O.B. Curtis had no luck at all after The Boston Strangler.

Burt Lancaster‘s career was different in that he was always a long player. His commercial hot streak of the late ’40s to mid ’50s (westerns or action-swashbuckler films mixed with two or three dramas) happened between his late 30s and mid 40s, but except for his 1950s peak achievement of From Here To Eternity (i.e., Sgt. Milt Warden) along with The Rose Tattoo and The Rainmaker, he was more into commercial bounties.

Then came a prestige-drama-mixed-with-action period — 12 or so years, 1957 to 1969, between his mid 40s and mid 50s — that turned into Lancaster’s greatest run. Oh, the glories of Sweet Smell of Success, Run Silent, Run Deep, Separate Tables, The Devil’s Disciple, The Unforgiven, Elmer Gantry, The Young Savages, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman of Alcatraz, A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Train, The Hallelujah Trail, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Castle Keep and The Gypsy Moths.

In the ’70s Lancaster, entering his 60s, downshifted into mostly genre-level, mezzo-mezzo films — seemingly a getting-older, wind-down cycle. The highlights were Robert Aldrich‘s Ulzana’s Raid, Luchino Visconti‘s Conversation Piece and Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900.

Then came the ’80s and a resurgence with three great performances in three commendable films — aging wise guy and Lothario Lou Pascal in Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City (‘80), oil tycoon Felix Happer in Local Hero (’82) and the kindly Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (’89).

Lancaster was not a great actor, but he was a graceful and commanding alpha-male presence, and he had a great sense of style, and he knew how to sell it. What was his greatest performance? I’m torn between From Here To Eternity, Elmer Gantry, The Swimmer and Atlantic City (“Boy, that was some ocean”).

Regional friendo: “Edward Berger‘s All Quiet on the Western Front popped on Netflix two days ago. I’m wondering what your reaction is.

“I watched it last night. Very brutal but exquisitely well made. But what really interested me was the material that was inserted that was not in the book:

“One, the armistice negotiations, showing the French need for vengeance, which would show up in the disastrous Versailles treaty that sowed the seeds for WW2.

“Two, German militarism and nationalism in the form of the obstinate general who decides to mount an offensive just before the armistice goes into effect.

“And three, Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer) dying just minutes before the armistice. In the book he dies in October, weeks before the end of the war. But having him die on Nov. 11 was, I think, a good move, making the futility of this most futile of wars even more damning and personal.

“A very, very good film. I’m wondering if it will make the final five for the foreign language Oscar.”

HE to regional friendo: “I actually saw it yesterday afternoon. I’d been told that seeing it on a big screen was essential, so my son Dylan and I saw it at the IFC Center. The theatre was the size of a modest living room, if that, and the screen was maybe 80 inches wide. I felt infuriated, rooked.

“I was thinking the same thing about the punish-the-Germans element in the Versailles Treaty, and how this set the stage for German fascism and World War II.  Horror begets horror.

“But apart from the fact that Germany has finally made its own version of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel, and despite it feeling bracingly authentic and horrific and having been vigorously produced and Paths of Glory-ed to an nth degree, we’ve all seen these ‘war is hell’ meets ‘lambs to the slaughter’ films before. Many times before.

“I respect and admire AQOTWF for what it is and what it’s worth.  But in our current realm this kind of large-sprawling-canvas, chaos-and-brutality-of-war film can only sink in so far. And 147 minutes felt too long. 120 or 125 would have sufficed.

“Haunting, brutally beautiful images start to finish. But what was up with the family of foxes at the beginning? Why didn’t Berger show us dead foxes near the end?

And that farmer’s kid shooting Kat (Albrecht Schuch) over stolen eggs and an attempted theft of a goose? It would have been better if the kid and Kat had shot each other. I wanted that kid dead.

“They should have changed one thing.  When the bald German general (Devid Striesow) orders his exhausted, shell-shocked ghost troops to go back into battle one last time before the 11 am armistice, the troops should have revolted and fragged him. They should stormed his stronghold and beaten that fucker to death with their rifle butts (like the Russian general who’s killed by the troops in Doctor Zhivago).  That would been profoundly satisfying.

“When Remarque’s book was published in ‘29 and Lewis Milestone’s film version appeared in ‘30, it was fresh impressionism and a horrifying carnage. But 90 years later and after many such films have covered similar ground (two previous film versions, 65 years after Paths of Glory, and only three years after Sam Mendes’ 1917) it almost feels like an afterthought. A jarring and penetrating one, but recycled material all the same.

“Should it be Oscar-nommed for a Best Int’l Feature Oscar?  Yes, it should be.”

“Or why I’m standing here trying to answer your bullshit questions. I guess it means that I lack the character to say no. But fuck it…I’ll answer a few of these stupid questions and then I’m outta here. What else?”

Actual Lancaster quote: “I don’t know why we’re carrying on this nonsense ”

Roughly 35 minutes into Tar Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar sardonically describes herself as a “U-Haul lesbian.” I chuckled when I heard it despite not knowing what it meant. Please forgive my deplorable ignorance.

The term stems from the bonding nature of lesbians, who, unlike significant numbers of gay guys, don’t tend to fuck like rabbits. Lesbians tend to have about the same number of sexual partners as heterosexual women, which is relatively few.

Boomer women have had an average of 7.4 partners, while boomer males have enjoyed 12.9. GenX asnd Millennial omen have averaged about 10 lovers.

Lesbians, in short, are like other women in craving the security of a relationship; they may even be more anxious to be in a relationship than straight women. Hence this Urban Dictionary definition:

“Who died and made you the great pumpkin? Please put drugs in my candy, and no Elvis costumes.”

“This is the life philosophy of Zillennials. Things that are interesting might also contain something that could cause a moment of discomfort so ban it all. It’s not your fault, kids. Your parents ruined you by over-protecting you, and now you’re these assholes.”