Ben Affleck’s Air is a solid 8.5 or even a 9 —- just don’t go expecting the world. It’s a modest, well-crafted film about vision and risk and soul and salesmanship, and the best aspect, I feel, is that it doesn’t swing for the fences.

It’s an unpretentious, steady-as-she-goes sports saga that frets about stress and failure and at the same time insists over and over that “if you don’t take a risk you can’t make a gain,” which is precisely what Walter Huston’s chuckling, goat-like prospector said in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

In a way Air is just as much of a pikers-strike-it-rich story as John Huston’s 1948 classic was and is, and the stakes are just as life-and-death when you consider what might’ve happened if Nike hadn’t signed Michael Jordan and if Matt Damon’s Sonny Vaccaro and Affleck’s Phil Knight had taken a gut punch instead.

Their down-to-business story is about marketing and branding that wound up on a super-scale, but told with a modest brush. Nothing goofy or slick or wild-ass. It starts out ordinarily or even ho-hummishly, but then it picks up a little steam and then a little more, and then little dabs of feeling are sprinkled into the second act and then spoonfuls of the stuff into the third as it gets better and better and better.

And then the big payoff moment comes, which isn’t as emotional as Jerry Maguire but then how could it be? Air isn’t about wives or girlfriends or kids or dogs…it’s strictly about business and that’s a good enough thing, trust me.

Here’s the thing: Damon’s Vaccaro is a beefalo bordering on a lardbucket, and I was bothered by this at first. But guess what? I stopped thinking about the paunch around the 30-minute mark. By the one-hour mark I’d forgotten about it entirely. This in itself says a lot.

7:55 am update: It’s being said that Viola Davis’s grounded performance as Michael Jordan’s tough negotiating mom, Deloris, is the keeper. She’ll probably be Oscar-nominated, but Damon’s Vaccaro shoulders the weight. He’s playing the poet and the singer and the believer of the piece, and it’s his best performance since…what, the second Bourne film? Or The Informant? And I love how he’s never cowed by Affleck’s Knight, calmly standing his ground, and in fact plays him at the very end. It’s brilliant. And I love Chris Messina’s tough-shithead agent who reps the Jordans and is content to eat alone.

It’s taken me three or four weeks to get through Al Kooper‘s “Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards.” Not because it’s a difficult or boring read, but because I tend to droop off if I read a book in the mid-to-late evening. It’s also a mild annoyance to read a dead-tree paperback. I’m pretty much a Kindle guy.

Kooper can write. His sentences are plain, unaffected, semi-humorous or sardonic. He conveys a confident, unpretentious, no-skin-off-my-ass attitude, which feels relaxing for the most part.

The first chapter I read covered the formation and break-up of Kooper’s version of Blood, Sweat & Tears (Nov. ‘67 to April ‘68). Kooper was the lead singer and designated artistic honcho, but he was soon ganged-up upon by drummer Bobby Colomby and guitarist Steve Katz for not having a strong enough voice. Which, if you listen to “Child Is Father To The Man,” was a fair criticism. Kooper was Odd Man Out-ed and and vocally replaced by David Clayton Thomas, and the second BS&T hit it big.

Kooper: “Like the monster who killed Dr. Frankenstein, they ousted me from a band I had envisioned and christened. I had lived my musical Camelot. [But] it only lasted eight months, shot down from a grassy knoll by ‘Lee Harvey’ Colomby.”

I’m sorry but “Bobby Colomby was a bad guy” is now and heretofore stuck in my mind.

@marmargrund @saginthesun #opinions ♬ original sound – Margoose

Because they’re all Region 2, which won’t play on my Sony 4K Bluray player.

Certain raving psychos who’ve commented from time to time in this space have insisted that there’s no such thing as Region 2 blockage or non-cooperation on domestic Bluray players. Aahh, but there is.

I’m especially taken with my Region 2 Blurays of A Kind of Loving, Deep End, The Conformist, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Women in Love

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I won’t be seeing Ben Affleck‘s Air until 7:30 pm this evening, but Will Mavity’s take is infuriating. Or the excerpted quote is. I love movies that represent the sensible end of the spectrum…movies that speak rationally, work their way through a logical, non-looney tunes narrative and wind up making practical sense — an almost disappeared genre. And Mavity is calling it a fucking “dad” movie? And yet, ironically, he likes it.

Here’s the most telling paragraph:

“This is no edge-of-your-seat type thriller like Gone Baby Gone or The Town.” HE reaction: Good!

“This is a cast of charismatic actors rattling off intelligent dialogue for two hours as they approach an inevitable conclusion.” HE reaction: And that’s bad?

“And yet Air manages to be effortlessly irresistible. Like Ben Affleck, it’s something that challenges the viewer to refrain from rooting for it, flaws and all. Strip away the overt corporate branding, and it’s the kind of movie that used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter and now feels increasingly like a rarity in today’s cinematic landscape.

“It doesn’t have any grand social themes of importance, looking to make a change in today’s world. It’s a simple, competently told, feel-good drama that will likely appeal to your dad, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

A friend mentioned having an original vinyl copy of the 2001:A Space Odyssey soundtrack. I asked if it contains the weird-sounding overture, a Gyorgy Ligeti composition that precedes the “Also Spracht Zarathrusta” main title.

Now I’m not sure what the overture is called on the soundtrack, or if it’s even featured. I know there are three Ligeti tracks on the soundtrack album — “Atmospheres” (Ligeti, SUDWESTFUNK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, ERNEST BOUR), “Lux aeterna” (Ligeti, Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks, Helmut Franz) and “Aventures” (Ligeti, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, Jane Manning, Mary Thomas, William Pearson).

The music heard prior to the second-to-last scene (French Chateau interior, brightly illuminated floor)…the music heard as Dave Bowman‘s pod zooms along and above the topography of the planet Jupiter (which several HE readers have derisively insisted is not the planet Jupiter…ayeholes)…this music is called “Atmospheres”. And yet a voice is telling me that this music is different from the overture track. I’m somewhere between lost and confused — can anyone straighten this out in a calm and rational way?