“Benpiketheactor” holds forth…

Jean Seberg looks ten times better in this carefully posed shot than in any particular scene in Robert Rossen’s Lilith (‘64). Her hair is truly astounding.

It will be interesting to watch the forthcoming 4K UHD of Alfred Hitchchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much (’55), which was shot by Robert Burks in VistaVision. But not the others.

If you’re talking about a 4K UHD remastered Hitchcock film that would really get people excited, the most desired would be North by Northwest (’59). The last Bluray upgrade happened in ‘07. Overdue for 4K. Way.

Hitchcock and Burks shot five films in VisaVision: To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo and North by Northwest.

From “Holiday vs. Scorsese,” posted on 12.23.13:

Hope Holiday (The Apartment, Irma la Douce, The Rounders) has stormed back into the world of show business with a Sunday morning Facebook post that attacks The Wolf of Wall Street, which she’d seen the night before.

“Three hours of torture,” she calls it. “Same disgusting crap over and over again. After the film they had a discussion which a lot of us did not stay for. The elevator doors opened and Leonardo [DiCaprio], Martin [Scorsese] and a few others got out. [And] then a screenwriter ran over to them and started screaming “shame on you…disgusting.”

“As the screenwriter went into his tirade, ‘I stood there with my mouth hanging open and then joined in, [saying] ‘you ought be ashamed of yourself,” Hope reports. ‘Talented men putting such junk on the screen and thinking it was funny. A fight almost ensued. I ran down the stairs. Some people liked it but most didn’t. I hated it. What egos! The least they could have done was cut an hour out of it. Then I saw the name Danny Dimbort up on the credits and nearly threw up — schlock king — shades of Nu Image films.”

“In other words, the metaphorical scheme of The Wolf of Wall Street — a darkly comical indictment of 1% greed and excess by depicting the absurdity of Jordan Belfort‘s shallow, more-more-more, money-lathered lifestyle — went right over Holiday’s head.

Most people digest movies solely in terms of subject matter and emotional warmth. They all say ‘what happens in it?’ and ‘did it make you cry?’ Five or ten percent (if that) say, ‘What was it about? What was the metaphor, the thematic thrust? What did it say about the world out there, about who we are?'”

I’ve just been told that if I want to potentially buffer my image as a moderate-minded fellow and not sink any deeper into the sinkhole of suspected racism, I need to ease up on my tortured reactions to Killers of the Flower Moon. In short, get with the program or you’ll be bitch-slapped and condemned as Hollywood’s David Duke.

And as a bonus, I’ve been told, while I’m carving up Killers of the Flower Moon, I’ll be hurting The Holdovers in the bargain!

What the fuck are these benign buzzards and gargoyles talking about? What have my divided reactions to a well-produced but clearly problematic, difficult-to-sit-through-a-second-time film about a century-old case of native Oklahoma genocide…how does that make me a racist?

Does everyone understand what woke-fingered demons these guys are? If they don’t like your opinions they’ll throw “R” spears at you in order to give you pause or perhaps even kill you outright. This is the stinking, steaming social cauldron in which we live.

It started with an assessment of my piece on Armond White’s negative review of Scorsese’s film.

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “The fact that Armond’s a Black man gives you some welcome cover here, of course. You must realize, however, that he is also a Black Trump supporter. Which places him pretty close to that guy in Sam Fuller‘s Shock Corridor. You know, the Black inmate who put on Klan robes.”

HE: “Armond’s Trump thing is insane.”

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “The Trump thing is who he is; it seeps into everything he writes. He owns it. So do what you will. You’re gonna try to kill this movie for the next…God, three or four months. But you won’t be able to. And The Holdovers will suffer as a result, because you’re gonna look so much like David Duke while you stomp on Scorsese that people won’t trust your positive recommendations. It’s a shame. And I know you don’t wanna hear this but it’s the truth.”

HE: “‘David Duke’? Maybe in the politically correct, culturally intimidated film elite wussy world that you and others live in, but otherwise that’s ridiculous and flat-out offensive. That’s bad comedy. My mixed feelings about Killers of the Flower Moon are about leaden pacing and poor dramaturgy, and my issues with Lily Gladstone…look, she’s a fine actress and is better-than-decent in the film but everyone knows she doesn’t really deliver Oscar-level chops, and that her handlers are using her identity as a passport to Best Actress contention.”

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “As you have to be aware by now, some folks already see you that way, whether you think it’s ridiculous or not. Just keep putting the pedal to the metal and watch the pushback you get. Consider this observation a friendly word of caution.”

HE: “‘Some folks already see me that way’? Is there any chance these folks are descendants of ’50s-era Hollywood predators who warned Carl Foreman, Dalton Trumbo and Jules Dassin to modify their HUAC testimony, give their industry profile a buff-and-polish and re-think their political persuasions? We’re living in a wicked, wicked world, man….and deep down the truly foul players know who they are. I spit on their insinuations.”

From “Scorsese’s White Man’s Burden,” posted by Armond White on 10.20.23:

“All that Killers of the Flower Moon has going for it is the woke idea that America’s white men are spiritually sick. It’s the latest variation on themes from the oil-well saga There Will Be Blood, with the added Millennial gloss of racial blame along the lines of Biden-era white self-revulsion.

“In the age of Diversity Equity Inclusion, Scorsese gets superficial, not more personal. He depicts the Osage as types — as overdressed, rowdy, pathological nouveaux riches, occasionally superstitious, sharing only slight interaction with resentful, miscreant whites.

“Instead, Killers of the Flower Moon pits white reprobates against indigenous innocents. Gladstone’s Mollie is a passive victim, given to bovine Streepian furtiveness and suffering. ‘Evil surrounds my heart,’ she moans, triggering Scorsese’s close-ups of ugly, mean, frowning white faces staring Mollie down — even though Gladstone’s complexion is whiter than theirs.

“[There is an] emphasis on Ernest’s false-hearted romance and eventual marriage to the quiet, heavyset Osage parvenue Mollie (Lily Gladstone). He goes from gaslighting Mollie to slowly poisoning her through insulin injections. [Note: White also describes Gladstone as “bovine.”]

“Killers of the Flower Moon is obviously hobbled by topical attitudes — an Osage gathering laments knowingly about white betrayal, actually invoking the modern word ‘genocide.’ It mourns a people without will or fight but plagued by melancholy, diabetes, and other maladies apparently affecting only their community.

“Killers of the Flower Moon is another instance of fatuous white guilt — a companion piece to the treacheries and condemnations of Spielberg’s West Side Story. Scorsese of all people should know the sensitivity that distinguished innumerable American movies that dealt with the tragic mistreatment of Native Americans, but this movie, instead, promises there will be Blood/Oil/Genocide. It is Scorsese’s first political movie, and, unfortunately, he has been radicalized against America.”

Sidenote: As HE readers know, I posted a piece last summer about the abbreviated dramatizing of the Osage murder saga in Mervyn LeRoy‘s The FBI Story (’59), which starred James Stewart. White is apparently the first name-brand critic to reference same. White: “LeRoy handled the Osage killings with economical moral clarity.”

** The term genocide was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”

Late yesterday afternoon I sat through my second viewing of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. (My first exposure was on 5.20.23 at the Salle Debussy, or five months ago.) It happened at Westport’s AMC Royale 6, Theatre #3 at 4 pm.

The screen illumination was decidedly dim (in Cannes the brightness levels seemed well above the SMPTE standard of 14 or 15 foot lamberts) and so the whole thing felt needlessly shrouded and vaguely downish…dark rainclouds overhead.

Plus there were only four of us in the theatre — Jody and myself plus a 60ish couple in the rear.

I knew I would be experiencing a kind of waiting, stuck-in-the-Oklahoma-mud gaslighting hell for the first two hours. For it’s not just Lily Gladstone being monotonously lied to by Robert DeNiro’s incessantly drawling “King” Hale and his dumbfuck nephew, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart — it was me also…me, Jeffrey Wells, sprawled in my handicapped seat for extra legroom…I had to sit through all that gaslighting bullshit…lying, lying, “ahh feel fer yew in your tahhm of grief”…will you shut the fuck up already, Bobby?

I flinched with every DeNiro sighting. Jesus, here it comes again…”we wull leave no stone unturned in order to fahhnd these killers…”

And then finally Jesse Plemons (as FBI investigator Tom White) shows up at the two-hour mark, and things start to pick up. But even then…

For one thing there’s no real Lily / Mollie catharsis at the end. No admonishments, no barking, no “how dare you?”

Even during her final scene with Leo / Ernest, after White has doubtless told her the full sordid truth about Leo’s conspiratorial complicity in the Osage murder spree as well as her own poisoning, Lily / Mollie can’t bring herself to slap or even scold that hayseed.

Instead she embraces Leo / Ernest and then her right palm gently touches the side of his face. Lily’s pained expression says, “I feel mostly pity in my heart for you, my poor dumb beef-bod yokel. You’re the lamb who went astray and saw to the deaths of my family and friends…poor little stupid baby.”

Not very dramatically satisfying, Lily, Leo and Marty!