I’m truly lucky to have a strong constitution and therefore good health. And I absolutely love doing the column and living this rat-a-tat life on a day-to-day basis, but thebestpartofmyjournalistichot–shotlifeisover. 1991 to 2019 — 28 years when things were prettygood and oftendelicious and sometimeswonderful. I’m simply too poor these days. Savoring the joys and adventures of yore is out of reach —that’s the long and the short of it.
If you know George Orwell’s “NineteenEighty–Four”, you surely know the sinister character of “O’Brien,” a duplicitous double agent who pretends to be Winston Smith’s friend but is actually a member of the Thought Police. OBrien’s goal is to seek out and persecute thought criminals.
I’m not saying David Poland is a manifestation of a woke O’Brien but he is unmistakably projecting a false flag narrative when he posts bullshit like the tweets below. Poland is either completely self-deluding, which doesn’t square with the fact that he’s very sharp and socially aware, or he is simply an agent of smoke and propaganda who is spewing this crap in order to politically protect himself.
You know what’s a lot better than you might expect? Rollercoaster (’77), a Jennings Lang-produced disaster thriller, made near the end of the big-budget disaster-flick cycle.
Rollercoaster was promoted as a drop-your-socks Sensurround experience, and it was that to a certain extent. But it was mainly an intelligent, low-key, logic-driven chase thriller.
You’d figure with the disaster-flick promotion there would be at least two or three scenes of rollercoaster cars flying off the tracks and people being killed, etc. There’s only one such scene, however, and it happens during the first half-hour and that’s it.
The rest is all cat-and-mouse stuff with amusement park inspector George Segal on the trail of psycho yuppie bomber Timothy Bottoms.
I would’t necessarily call it Hitchcockian but it uses elements of suspense to engaging effect.
Rollercoaster was written by Richard Levinson and William Link, the guys who created Colombo. It’s nicely (as in carefully, patiently) directed by James Goldstone (The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight —-’71); Goldstone’s big-screen career was unfortunately killed when he directed When Time Ran Out… (’80).
A little less than three years ago I posted a roster of HE’s top 20 Henry Fonda films. There was some pushback over my placing Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon A Time In The West, in which Fonda played a blackhearted villain named Frank, in 15th place.
I put it there because it wasn’t a “Henry Fonda” performance, but an aberration in the vein of Fort Apache. And yet even Fonda’s Fort Apache performance as Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday, a stiff-necked, emotionally constipated fanatic, represented an aspect of his own nature. (Peter Fonda once said this in an interview.) Frank was a bizarre showhorse role — completely divorced from Fonda the man and Fonda the legend.
In 19 of the 20 performances listed below Fonda was basically playing himself, which is how we’ve always preferred him.
1. 12 Angry Men
2 The Ox-Bow Incident
3. The Grapes of Wrath
4. The Lady Eve
5. The Best Man
6. The Wrong Man
7. Young Mr, Lincoln
8. Drums Along The Mohawk
9. My Darling Clementine
10. You Only Live Once
11. Fort Apache
12. On Golden Pond
13. The Boston Strangler
14. The Fugitive
15. Once Upon a Time in the West
16. Advise and Consent
17. Slim
18. Jezebel
19. The Tin Star
20. Jesse James
Arguably the worst stinkers of Fonda’s career were Mr. Roberts, Fail Safe (a technically good film that I’ve only rewatched once — that means something) and Sex and the Single Girl.
David Rothkopf to Steve Schmidt: “The irrationality of the degree of support for [The Beast]…despite his criminality, his control over the Republican party seems stronger than it’s ever been….even with all these trials, even with all we know about him….rational objections to this anti-democratic authoritarian don’t seem to hold.”
That’s because Trumpism isn’t rational — it’s emotional, primal, boiling in the blood. And Rothkopf doesn’t even allude to this.
Far-right Trump supporters believe that over the last several years U.S. culture has been under assault by the woke scourge (currently manifested by Biden’s kneejerk deference to diverse tribalism, equity favored over meritocracy, scolding white people for being white, trans values in elementary schools, Dylan Mulvaney, hordes of immigrants surging through the Mexican border), and they see him as the only hardcore bully-boy enemy of this scourge…the only guy who is saying “fuck this noise” without qualification.
Is there merit to this general thesis or analysis? To varying degrees, yes. Is it worth electing a fascist dictator in order to put a stop to this scourge, or at least to try and reverse or suppress it? Of course it wouldnt be worth it. Putting Trump back into the White House would be insanity. But like I just said, the Trump bonfire isn’t about rationality.
The strongest Best Actor narrative belongs to The Holdovers' Paul Giamatti -- bringer of a beloved centerpiece performance (Joe and Jane Popcorn have been over the moon for Alexander Payne’s ascerbic holiday film from the get-go) plus Paul’s legendary Sideways performance wasn’t even nominated 19 years ago.
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We all understand how the Oscar game works. If you want your indisputably excellent film to be regarded as a Best Picture contender, you have to release it during award season (late October to Christmas).
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For nearly a quarter-century Michael Mann made a series of intensely male-ish, high-stakes grand-slammers — hardcore films about headstrong fellows forging their own paths, sometimes outside the bonds of legality but always single-mindedly. And man, did they hit the spot!
The hot streak began with 1981’s Thief and ended with 2006’s Collateral, and also included Manhunter (’86), The Last of the Monicans (’92), Heat (’95), The Insider (’99) and Ali (’01) — seven films in all.
Then came the “excellent work but not quite a bell-ringer” period…Miami Vice (’06), Public Enemies (’09) and Blackhat (’15)…movies that registered as ground-rule doubles or triples. Which felt disorienting to Mann-heads given his 23-year home run history.
Now comes Ferrari (Neon, 12.25), which is made of authentic, bruising, searing stuff. In my eyes it’s another grand-slammer but what do I know? Obviously the reaction so far has been mixed-positive — many admirers but also a modest-sized crowd of dissenters.