…the pitchforkers will sulk and scowl all the more.

Instagram photo credit: David Geimer.

Moon-faced FBI guy Tom White (Jesse Plemons): “I was sent down from Washington D.C. to see about these murders.”

Scurvy conspirator Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio): “See what about it?”

White: “See who’s doing it.” — Killers of the Flower Moon dialogue, according to Variety‘s Brent Lang.

But surely he understands that reactions to the Bud Light and Maybelline promotions demonstrate that he’s triggered fierce emotion in the hinterlands. He can’t dismiss that entirely. DM is living on an isolated island, and residents of the territory surrounding that island have spoken. They can’t all be idiots.

Mulvaney is obviously free to promote whatever as long as corporate America sees an upside. More power, no skin off my backside, etc.

My understanding is that DM is biologically male and hasn’t resorted to surgical alteration…right? I further understand that Dylan regards anyone who may allude to his biological origins and/or ignores his preferred pronouns as a bad or even criminal person. But he has to understand, surely, that pretending to be a woman is different than having actually been born as a biological woman or, failing that, having been surgically altered into womanhood.

This message from Dylan Mulvaney…I cannot even imagine being in her shoes. She's received a level of venom that is beyond belief. But she shows so much more grace in this 3.5 minutes than all of her detractors combined. pic.twitter.com/UiajP0AR29

— Natalie (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ (@natgrace79) April 28, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney wants to make it illegal to call him a man. Yes, he’s serious. pic.twitter.com/Su2wEgdBMU

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 28, 2023

I re-watched my 4K UHD Apocalypse Now Bluray last night, and I wasn’t totally happy. I saw this 1979 classic at the Ziegfeld theatre two or three times in August and September of ’79, and the big-screen presentation (we’re thinking back almost 44 years) blows the 4K disc away. Aurally and visually, but especially in terms of sharp, punctuating fullness of sound.

Apocalypse Now was presented at the Ziegfeld within a 2:1 aspect ratio, which Vittorio Storaro insisted upon through thick and thin. The 4K disc uses what looked to me with a standard Scope a.r. of 2.39:1.

And the general sharpness of the image on that big Ziegfeld screen just isn’t replicated by the 4K. It looks “good”, of course, but not as good as it should.

As we begin to listen to The Doors’ “The End” while staring at that tropical tree line, John Densmore’s high hat could be heard loudly and crisply from a Ziegfeld side speaker. Before that moment I had never heard any high-hat sound so clean and precise. But it doesn’t sound nearly as pronounced on the 4K disc, which I listened to, by the way, with a pricey SONOS external speaker.

Remember that “here’s your mission, Captain” scene with G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford and that white-haired guy? When that scene abruptly ends, we’re suddenly flooded with electronic synth organ music…it just fills your soul and your chest cavity. Filled, I should say, 44 years ago. But not that much with the disc.

When Martin Sheen and the PBR guys first spot Robert Duvall and the Air Cav engaged in a surfside battle, Sheen twice says “arclight.” In the Ziegfeld the bass woofer began rumbling so hard and bad that the floor and walls began to vibrate like bombs were exploding on 54th Street…the hum in my rib cage was mesmerizing. Not so much when you’re watching the 4K.

As Duvall’s gunship helicopters take off for the attack on a Vietnamese village (“Vin Din Lop…all these gook names sound the same”), an Army bugler begins playing the cavalry charge. It was clear as a bell in the Ziegfeld — less so last night.

Two days ago (Wednesday, 4.26) I wrote about anticipating negative vibes from Kelly Fremon Craig‘s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. All those obsequious reviews (falsetto-voiced Scott Menzel called it “one of the best films of ’23”) got my dander up. Florid praise from a notoriously unreliable cabal of sensitive virtue-signallers will do that. I was ready to hate-vent but needed to wait, obviously, until I saw it.

Well, I saw Margaret early Thursday evening, and within minutes I knew my suspicions had been justified — the critics had overpraised it. But at the same time I realized it was a harmless and congenial thing — a mild-mannered ABC After-School Special that would never allow butter to melt in its mouth.

Based on Judy Blume’s celebrated 1970 novel, it’s just a mezzo-mezzo, no-big-deal saga about the trials and tribulations of an 11 or 12 year-old girl. Uncertainty and anxiety about God Fantasy #1 (i.e., that the Cosmic Almighty cares or is even aware of Margaret’s existence), for one thing. Not to mention moving from the comforts of New York City to a wonderbread New Jersey suburb; not to mention new girlfriends (including a socially awkward giraffe), boys with armpit hair and the twin prospects of menstruation and budding breasts.

“This?” I said to myself. “This is what inspired Scott Menzel and his congregated colleagues to shift into gush mode?”

There’s nothing to hate here, and at the same time nothing to get all that excited about. It’s not even a meal, this movie — more like a baloney and lettuce sandwich on toast with mayonnaise. It just toddles and ambles along in a nice massage-y way…fine.

Abby Ryder Fortson overacts a bit (i.e., tries too hard) as Margaret, but not to any harmful degree. Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates as her mother and Jewishy grandmother are fine. Even Benny Safdie is inoffensive.

How does it fuck things up then? It doesn’t — it’s modest and unassuming and stays within a certain perimeter. It does, however, stumble here and there.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is set in either ’70 or the very late ’60s — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. If the fictitious suburb of Farbrook, New Jersey (where Margaret and her parents move to) bears any resemblance to my old home town of Westfield or, let’s say, Saddle Brook or Plainfield or Montclair, then it wasn’t Newark or Trenton or Rahway or East Orange. Which is to say it was most likely a middle- to upper-middle-class, mostly segregated white town. (For what it’s worth, Far Brook is the name of a private school in upscale Millburn, New Jersey.)

I’m sorry to break it to some of you but that’s how things were during the LBJ and Nixon administrations. I was there so don’t tell me. There were some POCs in Westfield but not many, and they lived in a less-flush section of town that was south of the railroad tracks.

It is therefore not honest for Margaret to cast a bearded, good-looking black guy as a home room teacher. (If a black teacher had theroetically been hired by a white school district he certainly would’ve ditched the beard, which is way too Eldridge Cleaver-ish.) And there are too many black kids in Margaret’s class. It’s just not an honest representation of how things were in whitebread towns 53 years ago. Teenagers of different feathers simply didn’t hang together for the most part. Even WASPs and Italians (i.e., “guineas”) kept their distance.

There’s a big Act Two scene in which McAdams’ bigoted parents, who opposed her marriage to the Jewish Safdie, decide to pay a sudden visit, and an argument ensues between them and Bates about which religion the ambivalent Margaret will sign up for. The dialogue has a clumsy, too-blunt quality…it doesn’t flow. And Bates, we’re told, has impulsively driven all the way up from Florida in order to confront McAdams’ parents, and not alone but with a new white-haired boyfriend. That’s a two-and-a-half-day drive!

The offshoot is that Margaret gradually divorces herself from God and religion. Plus she finally starts menstruating so all’s well on that score.

Amy Nicholson repeated: “As charming as the film is in its best moments, it’s hard not to be frustrated as it backpedals from the book’s awareness that not all wrongs are righted. Sometimes, our heroines might stay buddies with bullies. Sometimes they might run from conflict and never explain themselves. Sometimes, they might even hurt people without making amends. Sometimes frank talk is more impactful than an idealized fantasy.”