…but he could really turn on the warmth and humanity when called upon, and he had the kindest and gentlest eyes of all the classic marquee-brand actors of his generation. Which is why I’m disappointed with the Kino jacket art for a forthcoming 4K Bluray of 12 Angry Men. I’m sorry but those Fonda peepers are nowhere to be found. They belong to someone else.
I’m delighted with my Criterion Bluray version, and can’t imagine how a 4K bump (out on 3.28.23) could make that much of a difference. I sound like a broken record but still.
Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.
Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is passionately supported (I’ll give it that) but on its own terms (reach, theme, imagination) and despite an excellent final line it drives sane people crazy.
The Fabelmans is basically a double that makes you feel more relieved than fulfilled when it ends.
For all the brilliance and audacity Tar underwhelms — Kubrick famously said that strong films connect for the feel rather than the think, and Tar is not much of a feeler.
The Banshees of Inisherin is also more weirdly thinky than feely.
I don’t know what Elvis is but it sure as hell is no triple or homer. The Bazzyness is draining.
Women Talking is an earnest whiff. Babylon, due respect, missed it. The corrosive cruelty delivered by All Quiet on the Western Front is unforgettable but not, in the annals of world cinema, unfamiliar.
At the end of the day Avatar: The Way of Water is more about knockout efficiency than the turning of a special key.
[Note: I’m aware that stories about dental matters can be distasteful. Please feel free to ignore.]
Getting older unfortunately means having to cope with our teeth getting gradually smaller due to grinding and whatnot. I have reasonably decent dental insurance but it doesn’t cover cosmetic stuff, and I can’t afford to shell out $15K or $20K for a set of new crowns (top and bottom). So last summer I decided to try the Instasmile veneer guys. Top and bottom veneers for around $700 and change. Not a massive amount of dough for an experiment that might turn out.
The veneers arrived two days ago. Instasmile offers a warranty agreement that allows for a re-do if there’s a problem. Here’s what I wrote to a customer rep named Autumn:
The basic problems are these: (a) They fit, but they don’t fit snugly enough. The bottom teeth especially. They generally feel a bit bulky. I feel as if I’m wearing HORSE TEETH — like I’m Mr. Ed. Plus they actually hinder my ability to handle consonants.
I’d hoped they would slip right on without issue. Except they feel a tiny bit large (especially on the bottom ridge), and seem a little too big. (b) There’s a saber tooth on the top left bridge that makes me look like a fecking VAMPIRE. It’s ridiculous and embarassing. The vampire tooth has to be ground down and eliminated. It makes me look like Christopher Lee in The Horror of Dracula (’58).
Generally speaking the feeling of looking like a hybrid species (half HORSE and half VAMPIRE) is not pleasant or welcome.
I need veneers that are delicate and generally lighter — ones that fit snugly but are a tiny but smaller on the bottom ridge. And the ridiculous VAMPIRE TOOTH has to be eliminated. I am a human being — I do not sink my fangs into the virginal necks of fair young maidens. Nor am I a HORSE — I don’t whinny or trot or eat oats or gallop around the horse track. To paraphrase F. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, I am a human fecking being.
SUMMARY: I need dentures that feel lighter and which fit more snugly without hindering my ability to speak clearly. Veneers, in short, that don’t make me look and feel like a HORSE, especially due to an overly large and bulky lower bridge. And you really need to eliminate the upper left VAMPIRE tooth. (I realize that I have a large upper left saber tooth but the Instasmile dentures make me look RIDICULOUS, like a drooling vampire.)
In short, your tech team needs to try again and do a better job. Sorry but that’s the situation, — Jeffrey Wells, HE
Yesterday on Twitter I deridedAnne Thompson‘s go-with-the-woke-flow celebration of the appallingly overcranked RRR as “virtue signalling.” Glenn Kenny called me a bad person for saying this.
HE reply: “’Virtue signalling’ is a fairly common malady. Common among older white critics, I mean. Hardly an insult. In their heart of hearts, they know what they’re up to. Someone comes along and calls it by its rightful name…not exactly a cruel or even rude accusation.”
Kenny: “So to call someone a liar is not an insult…gotcha”.
HE to Kenny: “Proclaiming your woke bonafides by praising an obviously mediocre film by a Tollywood schlockmeister…calling such a film an ecstatic experience isn’t ‘lying’ — it’s a way of telling your readers and fellow critics ‘look how liberated and post-racist I’ve become in my critical estimations! Except I’m post-racist in a good way. By thinking only positive thoughts about people of color.”
Kenny: “[So] you’re not insulting your dear old friend Anne Thompson, and she would never tell you to piss off on account of you doing so, or just ignore you. It’s true Anne is pretty good-natured. But everyone has their limit. And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting you made yourself something of a non-person to her some time ago. And now you’re freer to lay it on than you ever were, since you’ll likely never lay eyes on her in person again.”
HE to Kenny: “Aside from the usual collegial chiding, I did absolutely nothing to warrant being labelled a ‘non-person’ in Anne’s eyes….nothing at all. It’s all horseshit.
“You wanna hear something? Last year a person in the know told me that when the #MeToo Millennial harridans and hardcore trans lunatics decided, for no sensible or logical reason other than the furtherance of woke psychosis (and with your own kind and gracious goading when you tweeted that I had behaved like some kind of sexual ogre because, in a state in which the legal consent law is 16, I’d fallen in love with a 17 year-old heiress when I was 10 years older), to classify me as a toxic person who had to be booted out of two fraternities (Gold Derby and Critics Choice)…
“You know what I heard later? I was told by a person in the know that my ‘dear old friend’ Anne Thompson, whom I’ve known and been friendly with since the early ‘80s…an old Entertainment Weekly colleague whose Hobart Ave. home she invited me to once or twice to when our kids were very young in the early ‘90s…this person in the know told me that Anne voted with the Robespierrres to eject me on one of those decisions. (I forget which.) That is what’s known in the journalism trade as exhibiting loyalty, backbone and character, or otherwise being (heh-heh) a good hombre.”
There’s something terribly somber and sobering in the idea of the David Crosby dynamo being silent and still, above and beyond the fact of a life having run its course and come to a natural end. I don’t like finality as a rule. I prefer the idea of fluidity, of a beating pulse and the constant search for action and opportunity. I don’t like it when a store closes and is all emptied out and boarded up with “for lease” signs pasted on the windows. Keep it going, sweep the floors, stock the shelves, pay the bills. All things must pass, of course, but not now…later.
Incidentally: On 1.19.23 NPR’s David Westerveltposted a Crosby tribute piece, and in the fifth paragraph he wrote the following: “Crosby, Stills & Nash at times would soar with electric jams. But their foundation was a unique California sound built on harmonies, acoustic guitars and a dose of self-awareness often missing in rock lyrics. Exactly where in LA’s Laurel Canyon Crosby, Stills & Nash first sang together is still debated, lost in a smoky haze.”
Actually, it’s not debated. In A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name (’19), Crosby says the very first time they sang together and knew they really had something was in Joni Mitchell‘s kitchen, inside her modest-sized home at 8217 Lookout Mountain. Crosby says this to the camera while standing in front of Michell’s former pad. Who has ever claimed otherwise?
