The late William Sylvester (1.31.1922 – 1.25.95) became a semi-legendary figure when he played Dr. Heywood R. Floyd, the smug and officious National Council of Astronautics official from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Almost a comically flavorless and dull-minded bureaucrat, Floyd didn’t do or say much — he just flew up from earth to visit Clavius, the moon base, to see about the recently discovered black monolith that had been “deliberately” buried under the moon’s surface some four million years earlier.

One other significant role that Sylvester played was in Gorgo (’61). Sylvester portrayed Sam Slade, a seafaring adventurer of some sort who, along with Cpt. Joe Ryan (Bill Travers), captures Baby Gorgo, a huge prehistoric reptile who is brought to London for public exhibition. Everything seems fine until Ma Gorgo — a much, much larger beast — visits and trashes the city in order to save her son.

I’ve never seen Gorgo but my understanding is that it’s a tolerable mønster flick, but generally second tier. I’m thinking of Sylvester because a new Gorgo Bluray is currently for sale.

…that Colman Domingo‘s performance as Bayard Rustin in Rustin (Netflix, 11.3) will be a bold-as-brass, James Baldwin firecracker-type thing (which the trailer suggests), it seems to me that a film about an historical civil-rights-movement leader who was both Black and gay…that’s two checked boxes right there…plus a film that was launched by Barack and Michele Obama‘s Higher Ground Productions…that’s a third box-check given the urge to show obeisance to the Obamas within liberal circles, etc.

Should we give the possessory credit to the Obamas or director George C. Wolfe?

During his second term in the White House, Barack posthumously awarded Rustin with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At the 11.20.13 ceremony, Obama presented the award to Walter Naegle, Rustin’s surviving longtime romantic partner.

The almost entirely all-black cast includes Chris Rock as Roy Wilkins and Jeffrey Wright as Rep. Adam Clayton Powell.

Rustin will have its first-anywhere debut at Telluride. If Barack and Michelle don’t fly in and take a few bows, the troops will be bitterly disappointed.

…and a black floral-print shirt (fairly similar to Montgomery Clift‘s Hawaiian-style shirt that he wore in From Here to Eternity) under what looks like a Brian DePalma safari jacket.

I respect and admire the blending of a noir palette with a watercolor effect, which may have been achieved via standard photo manipulation using Average Joe software…the kind you can buy on any iPhone.

David Fincher‘s The Killer premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, 9.3 — six days hence. It will open in “select” theatres on Friday, 10.27. The Netflix debut happens on Friday, 11.10.

Marketing tag line: “After a fateful near miss an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.”

Sutton on Sunday means that I don’t post my usual quota of five or six stories. I am, however, posting today (Monday, 8.28) from West Orange, New Jersey. At 6 pm I’ll be catching an all-media screening of Denzel Whupass in Italy (i.e., The Equalizer 3) at the Regal Union Square. And then over to an Airbnb rental two or three blocks from LaGuardia. My flight to Albuquerque leaves tomorrow morning at 9:30 am. I may or may not be in Telluride by Tuesday night, but I’ll certainly be there by noon Wednesday. Planes and automobiles, unfortunately no trains.

Maggie Haberman to Jake Tapper (Friday, 8.25, beginning at 1:30 mark):

“[Trump] doesn’t want to look weak. In his mind, he [projected strength because] he didn’t concede. And that has been how he has operated for decade after decade after decade…through business failures, though bankruptcies of his casinos, through losses, through products failing, through divorces…if you pretend it is not happening, if you create your own reality, if you don’t give in to what other people are acknowledging as objective reality, then maybe it isn’t really there.

“He is somebody who doesn’t think in terms of long-term strategy…he thinks in very short increments of time….and it’s all about just getting from one post to another.

“This doesn’t really get said enough about [Trump], which is that he lived a fairly consequence-free life before he was President…he did not like the press [and] was very unhappy about it..but he [always] had his father to bail him out, and has moved from one thing to another without having to face the kind of consequences that other people might have [to deal with].”

Four and a half weeks ago (6.26.23) an ABC News story out of Osseo, Minnesota, reported by Kristina Watrobski, stated the following:

“Teachers for students as young as elementary school are allegedly being trained to discuss gender identity and conceal students’ preferred pronouns from their parents in a Minnesota school district.

“Two parents read a letter written by an Osseo Area Schools (ISD 279) elementary school teacher during the district’s school board meeting [on Tuesday, 6.20]. The teacher claims that ISD 279 employees were required to attend a training called ‘Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools’ earlier this year.

The letter detailed several aspects of the training that the ISD 279 elementary school teacher felt uncomfortable with, including employees being asked to discuss their ‘definition of gender’ before learning the district’s own definition.

One year earlier (6.21.22) Osseo’s Maple Grove High School announced that the school board had approved LGBTQIA+ history and culture resolution. Read the first five or six graphs — it’s a beaut.

Cue HE’s Crazy Town pushback brigade…”this isn’t true, it’s been made up by evil transphobes, there’s no such things as grooming of young children,” etc.

YouTube commenters: “Imagine living in a society where child abuse is not only condoned but glorified…childhood used to be about playing with your friends, enjoying ice cream and learning basic math, science and history — now it’s all about sexuality and defining your gender…get your kids out of the public school system…in my day we used to call it child grooming, and it was criminal…I applaud this woman for her bravery against the evil in our schools…it’s not about education any longer, but indoctrination…I’m a retired teacher , this is appalling and so dangerous…this is just disgusting and crazy…School is about reading, writing, math, history etc., and not gender or sexuality…this insanity must stop.”