Walter Hill is not crazy. He’s not eccentric. He turned 80 last January, and he’s Walter “you’d better believe it” Hill, and this is how he put it:

…who claims to have been “violently ill.” Even if you’ve become stricken with some awful stomach virus that results in uncontrollable vomiting, say, I don’t trust that term. It sounds too rehearsed or cooked up. Like something you might say after a facetime phone chat with your publicist.

The sickest I’ve ever been happened in Marrakech in the summer of ’76. It came after eating a dish of Couscous at a rooftop restaurant. I awoke around 1 ayem, weak and whimpering. I spent the next twelve hours “making love to the toilet,” as my girlfriend of the time put it.

But there was nothing “violent” about it. It was more about laying down and surrendering to the void. Around 3 or 4 am I said to myself, “Okay, this might be it…I might die. But at least when I depart this awful nausea will stop, and I can merge with the infinite in peace.”

Posted from Santa Barbara on 1.18.20:

RRR is flamboyant garbage. Ludicrous, primitive Telugu crap. Cruel British paleskin colonists are ridiculous. Moronic liberation mythology. Over-done, over-baked, horribly acted and three hours long. Pic has its heart in the right place, and believes in ridiculous extremes and heroic absurdities…it spits on reality & naturalism, celebrates cartoon-level tropes…if only I were four or five years old! Alas, I’m a bit older. Alas, I have certain minimal standards.

Okay, the musical dance sequence at the British party (Brits vs. Browns) is approvable. Reminded me of that classic tribe-vs.-tribe dance sequence from Michael Kidd’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Ram Charan is cool in a fierce, hardcore way. But N.T. Rama Rao Jr. is impossible, not to mention heavy-set.

Friendo: “Of course the Brits are ridiculous. And so is the imagery and use of music. It’s an absurdist comedy.”

HE to friendo: If you say so.

HE approves of Roger Durling‘s Virtuoso choices for the 2023 Santa Barbara Film Festival (2.8 thru 2.18).

Elvis‘s Austin Butler! Banshee’s of Inisherin‘s Kerry Condon! Armageddon Time‘s Jeremy Strong! Tar‘s Nina Hoss! Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler!

Durling has also invited The Inspection‘s Jeremy Pope to share the limelight.

During has also tapped Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan from Everything Everywhere All at Once. I can’t fathom how Durling, a true Renaissance man, could possibly love Everything Everywhere as much as he seems to. I’m figuring it’s a token salute to the film’s popularity among Zellennials plus the Asian-American DEI factor. I refuse to believe that Roger actually likes and admires this punishing, wafer-thin film about the multiverse…no!

The Virtuoso evening will be moderated, as usual, by TCM host and Entertainment Weekly awards correspondent Dave Karger. It’ll happen on Wednesday, 2.15.23.

HE has been faithfully attending and reporting on the SBIFF since…oh, ’04 or thereabouts. Will I be able to attend three months hence? I’d love to but we’ll see.

My fourth viewing of Tar will be with subtitles (Bluray or streaming), which will probably help enormously.

Thought #1: Since Avatar opened in late ’09 or 13 years ago, I’ve regarded it as a very filling, four-course meal — a complete, nourishing and fulfilling grand slam in all respects. And so I’ve never understood the need or the hunger, even, for any Avatar sequels. Other than the fact that they would make money, of course, but shouldn’t films of any kind (sequels or stand-alones) be willed into existence for reasons other than the mere earning of shekels?

Thought #2: I’m not all that enthused, frankly, about a film in which significant portions take place under waiter, given my own personal inability to breathe in that environment. I’m not a fish and I don’t have gills and the Navi aren’t wearing air tanks or mouthpieces so…

Thought #3: My understanding is that the Navi are, like humans, oxygen-breathing beings with lungs. So how do they manage to stay underwater for long periods of time with relative ease, as if they’re naturally aquatic? Director-writer James Cameron has an answer, of course, but right I’m scratching my head.

In a 3.21.14 piece called “Don’t Forget What’s Happening,” I wrote that “fanboy flicks are a profitable malignancy. They are well on the way to kicking real, adult-level movies out of mainstream cinemas and into VOD, streaming and other home viewing options altogether.”

That’s exactly what happened over the next eight years. Except now the plague has two heads — fanboy shit plus streaming content that numbs the soul.

“Super-amped fanboy flicks are the latest manifestation of the corporate influences which Pauline Kael lamented in 1980. They are flagships of a trend that are coming closer and closer to suffocating a mainstream movie culture that used to at least occasionally be about mirroring or capturing who we were (our values, needs, hopes) and how we lived. Every now and then theatres were the equivalent of community churches (i.e, places for inner communion and contemplation), but fanboy flicks are turning them into the spiritual equivalent of roller rinks and amusement parks.

“Fanboy flicks are a metaphor for the overall devolution of art and culture, not just in this country but all across Europe and Asia. They are injections of corporate heroin and Hollywood is the dealer. They are not pathways into our common histories and values and deep-down places. They are things we shoot into our minds and souls, but they are obviously inorganic. They’re not herbal tea or pot or peyote. They aren’t even Valium or Xanax. They’re Demerol.”

I’m going to watch RRR tonight, and I feel as if I’m about to have a tooth extracted without anasthesia. I don’t know for a fact that I’m going to hate it (how could I?), but I strongly suspect that I will. I’ve watched a few low-rent Indian schlock films in Indian restaurants; maybe if I watched it while eating…