6:30 pm eastern: The HE server switchover (Siteground to Liquid Web) has been happening since around 2 am this morning, or roughly 14 hours ago. According to whatsmydns.net, the HE signal is green-checked (i.e., looking good) in North and South America, most of Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asian, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
It’s currently weak in only four global locations or regions — (a) Auckland, New Zealand, (b) Nanjing, China, (c) Moscow, Russia and (d) Glostrup, Denmark.
You wouldn’t believe how much the know-it-all Telluride wokester journos were shrieking with delight and doing cartwheels over Sarah Polley’s talking-in-a-barn movie last September…Oscar noms, going all the way, wheeee!
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We’re all presuming that Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon will be highly impressive, but it’s nonetheless encouraging to read an actual morsel of second-hand hearsay, to wit:
If you ask me the 2.23 debate thread that contains this short paragraph (Glenn Kenny vs. Daniel Rowland) is just as interesting as it addresses certain negatives that may emerge, depending on the breaks.
Around 2:30 am Tuesday morning a trio of guys wearing dayglo green hoodie parkas plus the usual snow gear were shoveling out the driveway of my Wilton condo community. I was awake anyway as I’d just updated my Web.com nameserver codes, but the sound of their snow shovels scraping the driveway surface…”guuhhrrutt!…guuhhrrutt!”…was an eye-opener.
Father Gabriele Amorth, the fact-based character played by Russell Crowe in The Pope’s Exorcist, was a co-founder, along with five other like-minded priests, of the International Association of Exorcists. Amorth, who passed in 2016 at age 91, claimed to have performed “tens of thousands” of exorcisms over the decades.
Imagine — “tens of thousands” of Puzuzu demons inhabiting the souls and bodies of humans young and old, and the vast majority almost certainly inspired by the imaginings of William Peter Blatty and the directing chops of William Friedkin. And Amorth casting out…what, 15,000 or 20,000 unclean spirits?
Directed hy Julius Avery, The Pope’s Exorcist (Sony, 4.14) is by all appearances an exploitation film. Once you’ve seen the trailer what would be the point of watching the full-length version? I’m asking.
…which is why many of us, probably a large majority, regard Everything Everywhere All At Once, a movie that stinks of pulp Marvelism and rancid Millennial mythology by way of couch-potato product, as a plague movie…the new ruin, the new pestilence, the new terrible normal.
I was tapping out some thoughts about Rupert Murdoch’s sworn admission during testimony over the Dominion lawsuit trial against Fox News. And then I happened upon Rick Wilson’s 2.27 thoughts about same. He fails to note that Maoist woke terror on the left is…okay, not quite as bad as blind Trump denialism about the 2020 election having been rigged, but….okay, let’s not get into that now.
Wilson: “So the Dominion lawsuit depositions from Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are lighting up the internet tonight, and there’s a true frenzy over the revelations that the entire network, even the performative nightside trio of terror.
“They knew Trump lost. They knew there was not then (nor is there now) a scintilla of fraud. They knew, and lied. Over, and over, and over. They chose guests they knew were lying. They allowed story meetings promoting a massive, dangerous lie that reduced faith and belief in the American system. The entire top level of Fox management knew their lies were leading to danger for this nation.
“Just as the GOP once ruled the base and now the base rules the GOP, a slavering, inchoate rage beast demanding more and more…so to is Fox owned by its base. Rupert and Roger’s machine ran off the rails, and they fear their audience will follow the conspiracy crack at OAN or Newsmax or some damn Telegram channel.
“They knew the lies were lies. They fed and fed the beast. The Fox audience is, let’s be honest, unsophisticated.” [HE insert: Undereducated and incurious.] “They’re addicted to ‘hot women with great hair, big tits and degrees from cheap J-schools’ (as Roger Ailes used to say) and ragey bros telling them that their hatred of immigrants, blacks, gays, readin’ and ideas is logical.
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“The question the Fox audience should but won’t ask is, ‘What else is behind the curtain? What else is a lie? What else do they say about us off-camera?’
“Here’s your answer: it’s [mostly] all a lie. The entire thing is a big, dumb, loud performance piece.
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“They’re lying about Ukraine. About Biden (at scale). About all the catalog of imaginary culture war demons. (TONIGHT ON TUCKER: ‘Will Transtifa Terrorist Drag Queens FORCE your kids into Gay Sharia Marriage Veganism?’)
“This is Rupert and Roger’s model at its end state…a seething, metastasizing cancer consuming the minds of millions of Americans convinced by the cynical playhouse of a network of liars, arsonists, and enablers.
“Dominion called their b.s. Fox will lose. They’ll settle and offer a fat check and an elliptical apology.
“If their viewers had the slightest curiosity they’d start asking what Fox is lying about to them now…and tomorrow…and the next day. Because one thing is certain. The lies will continue.”
Hollywood Elsewhere will be switching domains starting around 1 am eastern or 10 pm Pacific. It may take a few hours to populate — be advised. I’ve been with Siteground for two or three years, but I’m heading back to Liquid Web. Here’s hoping it all goes well.
Update: The domain migration (technically a re-migration) began at 1 am on Tuesday, 2.28. I updated the new nameservers about a half-hour later. So far it all looks fine, although “they” say the full worldwide propulgation can take as long as 24 to 48 hours.
We all snark-watch or bitch-watch the Oscars. It’s fun to talk back to the screen and tweet about whatever. But for me, the 95th Academy Awards (AMC, 3.12) will be a hate-watch. I’ve been watching the show since I was 9 or thereabouts, and year after year I’ve always felt enthused, touched, occasionally wowed. I adored the Polanski Oscars (75th Academy Awards, 3.23.03). The Best Picture screw-up at the end of the 2017 Oscars was fantastic; ditto Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. But I’m actually dreading the EEAAO Oscars. Truly dreading them.
Two days ago I posted about the nightmarish Covid Oscars (“Never Forget Soderbergh Oscars…Night of Infamy“). Perhaps it isn’t fair to describe that godawful show as a Steven Soderbergh creation. There were two other producers (Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher) and a third guy (Glenn Weiss) who actually directed it.
Soderbergh mainly took the gig as a favor to Sher, but “he wasn’t the micromanaging woke Blofeld you seem to think he was,” says a certain fellow.
“I know Soderbergh was the most famous person of this roster, and hence the easiest target,” he continues. “But it’s not as if he was the sole mastermind. He was actually directing Kimi at the same time, as multi-taskers do.”
[Posted twice before — 6.25.11, 3.10.18] You can make fun of the San Francisco touch-down scene in William Wellman‘s The High and the Mighty (’54), and particularly Dimitri Tiomkin‘s choir-of-angels music, etc. You can call the Christian symbolism tacky, I mean, but I went through something similar once in a private plane as we landed in St. Louis under heavy fog, and it looked and felt exactly like this.
It happened in the mid ’70s. I had hitched a ride across the country (Van Nuys to LaGuardia) in a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza. The pilot was a Russian pediatrician named Vladimir, and he agreed to take me and a guy named Gary in exchange for gas money. We left in the early morning, stopped for gas and lunch in Tucumcari, New Mexico, bunked in a St. Louis airport motel that night, flew out the next morning and arrived at LGA by the early afternoon. Anyway…
The fog was so thick as we approached St. Louis that the air-traffic-controller had to talk us down. I was sitting shotgun and the air was pure soup, and I quickly fell in love with that soothingly paternal, Southern-accented voice, telling us exactly what to do, staying with us the whole way…”level off, down 500, bank right,” etc. When we finally got close to the landing strip the fog began to dissipate and the landing lights looked just like this, I swear. And the feeling was the same.
Talk about the welcoming glow of Christianity. It was almost enough, during that moment and later that night as I thought about it, to make me think about not being a Bhagavad Gita mystic any more and coming back to the Episcopalian Church.
Earlier today Larry Karaszewski posted a four-minute excerpt from Raymond Millet‘s Television, eye of tomorrow (Télévision, l’oeil de demain), but he didn’t mention there’s a complete version that runs 24 minutes. Millet’s short was based upon a premise by science-fiction author René Barjavel.