Month: February 2024

Re-submitting to the epic, sand-choked saga of Dune: Part Two didn’t thrill me in a narrative sense, but to my great surprise I adored watching Denis Villeneuve’s 168–minute, richly immersive, alternate–reality dream trip from a purely visual perspective.

Greig Fraser’s desaturated color (and briefly monochromatic) cinematography, Brad Riker’s art direction, Patrice Vermette’s production design and Joe Walker’s editing…Villeneuve’s visionary, deep-dive scheme provides the maestro-like guidance…conducting these four fellows…this is where the genius comes from, where it lies.

Dune: Part Two is a serious trip, an exotic world unto itself…one of the most eye-opening, original-feeling geek films I’ve ever seen.

If you can put aside the Frank Herbert story and just tune in to the other-worldliness, it’s quite a feast for the eyes — a major league art film. Stunningly exotic and quite original…quite the aural-visual knockout.

Rags and monster worms and pyramids and sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand. Mr. Sandman, man. Everyone and everything coated and smothered in trillions upon trillions of sparkling micro-crystals. Endless sand dune vistas…sand in my pores, in my ears and eyebrows…sand crystals in my pants, my mouth, my hair, my lungs…surrounded, enveloped…I couldn’t fucking breathe but in a different way Villeneuve opened me up.

Who the fuck cares about any of this? Forget the convoluted, forehead-slapping plot about dynasties and corruptions and revolutionary fervor and the arc of the chosen…just forget it, bruh. If you try to follow the labrynthian twists and turns you’ll be driven insane…bats in your belfry.

Just turn on the fucking phone and follow Herbert’s plot on the film’s Wikipedia page (which is what I did, starting around the one-half mark) and focus on the commanding, mind-bending, majesterial all of it…the dizzy, dancing way it looks, feels, sounds…the desaturated palette…the Fremen language rendered in subtitles. Scene after scene…some other planet…wowser exotica. I felt as if I had mescaline in my system. I forgot about the popcorn.

But at the same time I felt swamped and surrounded by the superhero, epic-saga cliches. So you know what I did? I said to myself “fuck all this…just concentrate on the textures, the brushstrokes…the wondrous style of it.”

The surprising aspect (at least from my perspective) is that Dune, Part Two truly abounds with excellent performances from everyone…Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya (as the messianic Paul Atreides and the pretty, half-feral Chani) deliver their career-best. Really — babygirl Timothee has turned into a man. And I never thought Zendaya’s acting was especially good. Now I feel differently.

Cue-ball bald, albino, eyebrow-less Austin Butler (as the totally psychotic Feyd–Rautha Harkonnen) has saved himself from the Curse of Elvis. He’s also saved himself from that awful ’60s motorcycle movie, The Bikeriders.

Not to mention the devotional Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. The demented, royal-robed Chris Walken. The bald, white-skinned, animal-eyed beast (Glossu-Rabban Harkonnen) played by Dave Bautista. All of the spacey and spooky women in robes and veils (Rebecca Ferguson, Lea Seydoux, Florence Pugh, Charlotte Rampling, Anya-Taylor Joy). And that bald, massively obese, sprawling mountain of sickening flesh in a dark pullover tunic (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), played by Stellan “fat as a cow” Skarsgard…what a complete, Trump-like animal.

I really wanted to hate Dune: Part Two, but I couldn’t. It wouldn’t let me. Hats off to the team.

Just remember to bring your phone and read the plot as you go along.

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Eeeyaagghhh!!! Nightmares, convulsions, tears of rage. howls and jowls. My back is arched…hissss!!

I can’t wait for these fucking guys to fail. You know what would be absolutely dead perfect? If the Daniels give a lead role in this new film to the manatee-like Lily Gladstone…please do this!

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is conducting a poll of smartypants film journo and industry types, and the specific question is “send me your top five films of the 1950s unranked.”

Only five films from an entire decade? Not even ten…just five?

HE’s Top Five of the ’50s: (1) Fred Zinnemann‘s From Here To Eternity (’53); (2) Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg‘s On The Waterfront (’54); (3) Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52); (4) Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (’55); and (5) William Wyler‘s The Big Country (’58).

It strikes me as astonishing that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and subordinate co-prosecutor Nathan Wade are still being grilled as to when their affair began and whether or not they’ve told the full truth about when and where their sexual activity took place, etc.

I’ve acknowledged time and again that most of us are infuriated that Willis and Wade played their private cards this foolishly, thoughtlessly and arrogantly, and in so doing created absurdly embarassing optics for the prosecution, but why is this idiotic sideshow still the stuff of headlines?

If Willis and Wade wind up being taken off the case and replaced by substitute prosecutors, fine…but what’s happened to the main order of business?

Why are Willis and Wade apparently having fudged some of the apparent facts about their affair (which may have begun earlier than claimed and which ended late last summer)…why is this the big focus and not what any fair-minded observer would call the main order of criminal business?

Who has ever told the whole truth and nothing but the truth about past sexual indiscretions? Who cares who paid for this or that, or whether or not Willis settled shared expenses with cash or if Wade covered most of the costs?

What has happened, in short, to the prosecution of Trump and his stinking, crooked-ass cronies? Trump clearly attempted to influence Georgia election officials — including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via that famously recorded phone call — to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Willis’s office indicted Trump and 18 others on 41 charges on 8.14.23.

That’s criminal behavior, indictable fraud, racketeering, fast and loose stuff, fake electors, slippery bad guy moves. And all anyone wants to talk about is the schtupping between Willis and Wade. Hasn’t this crap gone on long enough?

Let’s imagine that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo (’58) never existed. Let’s also suppose that by way of some kind of odd exercise or experiment 100 present-tense directors (all ages, genders and persuasions) have been asked to write and shoot a thrilling scene in which a couple of male San Francisco cops (a detective and a uniformed beat cop) are chasing a thief across the rooftops.

Let’s also presume that a fair percentage of the directors would decide to show one of the cops falling to his death while the other slips and is seen hanging from a rain gutter, and with no apparent way of rescuing himself.

I guarantee you that 98% or 99% of these directors would end this scene conclusively by showing us what happens to the hanging-from-the-rain-gutter person.

They would either show the protagonist (a) falling to his death, (b) somehow making a great acrobatic lunge for safety and miraculously succeeding, or (c) being rescued at the last second by a late-arriving cop or a civilian bystander.

None of them, trust me, would end the scene without some kind of clear-cut, life-or-death payoff. They would never consider leaving the rain-gutter guy in some sort of existential limbo as the scene fades to black.

But Hitchcock did this, and that’s what makes Vertigo‘s very first sequence a piece of fascinating, unforgettable, bold-as-brass art.

What other film (crime, action, suspense, anything) has put a major character in serious jeopardy during an early scene, and has never shown us how he/she gets out of danger? Please name one or two.

I don’t hate my VW Passat (love the sound system, the shiny black color) but I’m starting to grow truly weary of the constant problems. It won’t stop costing me more and more money for repairs (labor, parts).

The latest migraine is a leak in the heater core, which warms up the car interior. This mechanism circulates and heats up the coolant inside the round plastic reservoir container and thereby creates warm air, but the coolant has been leaking out and forcing me to re-fill it every 10 to 14 days.

I could let this situation passively ride along by simply replacing the coolant every couple of weeks, but if I want to seriously fix the problem it’ll set me back a minimum of $1800 and possibly a bit more.

Early this morning my local mechanic (Georgetown Shell) told me I need to replace the leaking heater core plus a gasket that goes with it. Cost: $315.

Soon after the official VW Danbury mechanic rep estimated that removing the leaker and installing the brand new heater core will take five hours at $289.00 per hour = $1445.00 + $315 + tax and whatnot for a total of roughly $1775.00. And what if it takes a bit longer?

I can’t drop almost $2K so I’m going to have to hire Vinnie, the mellow Bridgeport freelancer, to do the installing. Vinnie is my idea of a good hombre with reasonably good skills, but he hasn’t delivered like those VW Danbury guys, or at least he hasn’t so far. But I like and respect him.

I also bought some K–Seal, some gloop that you pour into the circulatory system that finds leaks and seals them. With the engine purring I poured it into the plastic reservoir and said a little prayer.

Plus it was really cold and extra windy today, and along with a general sense of uncertainty and anxiety I was feeling slightly more downhearted than usual.

As I was entering a Danbury Auto Zone store around 11:30 am I was flinching and slightly wincing and shuddering and glancing at my reflection in the store window and muttering stuff like “I’m in hell…my life is hell to some extent…it didn’t feel anywhere near this oppressive during the the 2006-to-2018 heyday….it really felt kinda wonderful during that 12-year run.”

I don’t mean actual hell. I mean that every so often my life feels like brimstone and treacle. I truly love my movie-driven life and the rigors of writing the column each and every day, but the idea of sitting through Dune: Part Two this evening fills me with absolute dread.

I don’t care what everyone else has been saying. Denis Villeneuve and I have never really gotten along. If it turns out to be better or even much better than expected, great. But my gut tells me it almost certainly won’t be.

I would love to live a nice, car-free life in Paris, and just take the Metro around town and do a lot of walking. A free man in Paris, unfettered and alive.

During last night’s discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision to cut Donald Trump an enormous amount of slack (no decision on Presidential immunity until June, and his conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election trial probably delayed until September or even October) by way of their own cowardice, Rachel Maddow said the following [8:20 mark]:

“When you talk about the unsettling cravenness of the [Supreme Court]…the cravenness of the court is evident with what they’re doing with the pacing here. Putting this off for seven weeks, sitting on it for two weeks for no reason…obviously pushing all of their cases, pushing them to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of [these cases]…it’s the timing,

“But it’s also the idea that [Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity] is an open question.

“What’s the most famous pardon in American history? Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon once he had resigned from office. Why did Ford pardon Nixon? Quote: ‘As a result of certain acts or omissions that occured before his resignation’ — meaning as a result of stuff he did while President — ‘RIchard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial, whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings pf the appropriate grand jury and the discretion of authorized prosecutors,’ etc.

“The idea that a former President can never be tried for something he did while [serving as President]…this idea if disproven by a plain reading of American history, and the idea that this has to be taken up [by the Supremes] is like them saying that the sky is green.

“Even for the non-lawyers amnog us to say, “You know what? The sky is not green, even on our worst day. This is b.s. [They] are doing this to help [their] political friend, [their] partisan patron…for them to say that [the immunity thing] needs to be decided because it’s unclear in the law….this is flagrant, flagrant bullpucky, And they know it, and they don’t care they we knew it, and that’s disturbing about the future legitimacy of this court.”

N.Y. Times analysis piece by Alan Feuer [2.28], “In Taking Up Trump’s Immunity Claim, Supreme Court Bolstered His Delay Strategy“:

“By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the [Suopreme Court] justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.

“It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October.

“But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.”

Unless you suffer from insomnia, a good night’s sleep is like experiencing “a little slice of death.” We all know what sleep and death are, and neither are all that big of a deal. If you’ve lived a relatively healthy and robust and crackling 76 years, as Richard Lewis did, it’s not a hugely devastating tragedy to submit to long slumber. The loss of a beloved person of value is always a sad event, of course, but the key determination is quality of life, not quantity of days. (Unless, that is, you have an especially good thing going with a young grandchild or two, in which case it is a bit of a tragedy — terribly sorry if that was the case.) At least Lewis was active and enjoying his life until a sudden heart attack got him. We’re all gonna get there. When your number’s up, Mr. Death doesn’t know from negotiations.

The financial success of Super Mario Bros, Oppenheimer and Barbie aside…

Critical Drinker: “Last year was a bit of a turning point for all this stuff in Hollywood. We’re going to see more of it, for sure…[woke-injection bullshit] isn’t going to go away overnight, but it’s definitely reached a point where it’s no longer financially viable. Certainly in the superhero realm. Superhero fatigue, oversaturation of the market, declining quality, spreading themselves too thin, perhaps hiring people to direct and write for reasons other than merit. Plus the political dimension of it has become tiresome.”

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Posted on 12.1.23

Two days ago Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted to having read the proverbial writing on the wall and more or less bullhorned the following “whoa, Nellie!” message to Disney wokesters, which I’ve conveyed here in HE-styled rhetoric:

“All right, enough, dammit…we have to face facts…the Critical Drinker has been right all along and we have to acknowledge the state of things, or at least I do…the new Disney law is “no more woke propaganda in our movies”

“We’ve clearly alienated Joe and Jane Popcorn in the parenting community and we really have to get back to being good old family–friendly Disney, and in case you’re not reading me, we’ll henceforth be re-assessing the advisability of using LGBTQIA and maybe even progressive femme-bot material in our animated features. We’ll be taking it one step at a time.”

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Oh, you make me mellow / Oh, I make you mellow / Wrecking the sheets real fine / Heaven knows what you sent me, Lord / But God, this is a mellow time