Friendo: What do you think of Justine Bateman‘s appearance?
HE: I think she looked a lot better when she was younger. But if she’s cool with looking a bit worn and gothy, that’s fine. No worries on this end.
Friendo: I’m pretty sure she still dyes her hair. Plus she’s wearing makeup. What’s the difference between that and trying to look younger?
HE: She seems to basically be saying that she’s out of the hottie game.
Friendo: Why not just go all gray?
HE: Fair point.
Friendo: …and just embrace that? She’s still trying to look young. It’s just she’s using age as makeup/identity
HE: It’s cool to go solid white gray, but mixed dark and gray…I don’t know, it doesn’t work.
Friendo: Her pitch is that she’s just being honest, but why would she also dye the hair?
HE: Because she’s being “honest” as far as it goes.
Friendo: I think she looks weird because her hair is still long, her ears looks elfin and the eyeliner is severe
HE: The dark eyeliner makes her look gothy. And those deep ridge lines around her mouth.
Friendo: Her eyes are too old to wear that eyeliner. It just makes her look older
HE: Agreed.
Friendo: Cut the hair to the chin, ease up on the eyeliner and she’d look better. I think

The iPhone camera somehow diminishes the yellow and violet blossoms. The colors don’t quite pop like they do with the naked eye.

The team “HBO Max” has finally and officially been killed. Earlier today Warner Bros. Discovery officially announced Max as the big new hunka-chunka streamer. It launches on 5.23.

Max will be available in three separate versions, but why would anyone want Max Ad-Lite ($9.99/month or $99.99 annually)? Max Ad Free ($15.99 or $149.99/year) delivers (a) two concurrent streams, (b) 1080p HD, (c) up to 30 offline downloads and the usual 5.1 surround sound blah blah. Max Ultimate Ad Free ($19.99 or $199.99 per year) will offer (a) four concurrent streams, (b) up to 4K Ultra HD resolution, (c) 100 offline downloads and (d) Dolby Atmos. $200 bucks a year for “up to” 4K resolution?

In HE’s book, there is no competitor to John Hurt‘s performance as the Roman emperor Caligula in BBC’s I Claudius, which was shot on video in ’76.

I’ll allow that Jay Robinson‘s Caligula in The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators (’54) was enjoyably grandiose in a campy sort of way, but Hurt was much more wicked and perverse, and that wonderful snappy voice has never been used to greater effect.

For years I’ve been searching YouTube for his great death-of-Caligula scene (starting at the 42-minute mark in “Hail Who?“, which originally aired on 11.15.76). Today I finally found it. What’s magnificent is how Hurt doesn’t shout in anger or fear but weeps like an hysterical, deeply disappointed child.

For those who live in a cocoon of protective ignorance and are indistinguishable from ostriches who bury their heads in sand when fearful, this article contains historical spoilers:

Most of the Osage murders happened in the early 1920s, when the principal bad guy, William Hale (1874-1962), was in his late 40s. And in the below photo he looks it — dark hair, not too middle-aged, fit and trim for a somewhat older guy.

Sentenced in 1929 to a life term for only one of the many killings he was responsible for, Hale was paroled in July 1947 and died at age 87 in the second year of the JFK administration.

In Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which will be shown on 5.20.23 (a bit more than four weeks hence) at the Cannes Film Festival, Hale is played by Robert De Niro, who was 77 when filming began in April 2021.

Will anyone care that De Niro was 30 years older than the real-deal Hale was in ’21? Or that Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Hale’s homicidal nephew, Ernest Burkhart (1893-1986), was around 47 and 48 during filming, and therefore Hale’s precise age at the time of the century-old killings? Burkhart was around 28 when the murders began to happen.

It’s not that crazy, of course, for actors to play a decade or two younger or older than actual historical figures they’re portraying. Viewers never give a damn one way or the other, and I will try like hell to get past this when I catch Scorsese’s film next month. Because I want to go with the flow.

But at the same time an actor being 30 years older is, I feel, a bit of a bridge too far. If you’re casting older, you should stay within a decade or two. Otherwise the general disregard for history and biology undermines the verisimilitude. If you’re going to cast a name-brand actor is his late 70s to play a guy in his late 40s, you’re free to throw caution to the winds by casting a guy in his mid to late 80s…why not, right? Scorsese could’ve theoretically cast Clint Eastwood as Hale.

He could just as easily have cast an actor in his late 20s, say, to play Hale…who cares, right?